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For the city in Cebu Province, see Naga City, Cebu. For other uses, see Naga.

Template:Infobox Philippine city

The City of Naga (Bikol: Ciudad nin Naga; Filipino: Lungsod ng Naga) is a first class city of the Philippines. Located in the Bicol Region, a peninsula on the southeastern tip of the island of Luzon, it is 377 kilometers southeast of Manila, the nation's capital, and about 380 kilometers northeast of Cebu City in the Southern Philippines.

With a relatively smaller land area compared to other cities in Bicol which accounts for its being the most densely populated city in the region, Naga City is locally known as the "Heart of Bicol". It is the religious and cultural center of the Bicol region. Residents of Naga City are called Nagueños.

Naga City is at the core of Metro Naga, an unofficial designation given to 14 rural municipalities and Naga City, administered by the Metro Naga Development Council. The MNDC covers the entire 2nd district of the province of Camarines Sur, and part of its 1st, 3rd and 4th districts.

Education

Naga City is the center of education in Bicol due to the presence of numerous institutions of higher learning, including three universities: Jesuit-run Ateneo de Naga University; non-sectarian University of Nueva Caceres, the biggest university in Bicol region in terms of enrolment; and Universidad de Santa Isabel operated by the religious order of Daughters of Charity sisters and also the oldest normal school for girls in the Far East.

A fourth university in the making in Naga City is Naga College Foundation, the region's leading school in Criminology. The Philippine Women's University also has its Career Development and Continuing Education Center in the city, while the University of the Philippines Open University caters to distant-education students.

The biggest secondary school in the region is also located in the city. Government-run Camarines Sur National High School has always registered over 10,000 enrollees every school year.

The oldest specialized live-in Christian higher educational institute for clergy in the country is also found in Naga City. Established in the early part of the 18th century, Holy Rosary Seminary (Seminario del Santissimo Rosario), a Roman Catholic seminary run by the Archdiocese of Caceres, has produced 22 bishops, including the first Filipino bishop, Jorge Barlin, and the first Filipino Cardinal to work in the Roman Curia, Jose Cardinal Sanchez. It has richly contributed as well to the national heritage through Jose Ma. Panganiban and Tomas Arejola and 7 of the 15 Bikol Martyrs. On January 29, 1988, the National Historical Institute declared the Holy Rosary Seminary as a National Historical Landmark.

One of the leading maritime schools in the country, Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation, has two campuses in Metro Naga, one along Panganiban Drive and another in Canaman, a suburban town.

The biggest group of Montessori schools in the Bicol region is also based in Naga City. Arborvitae Plaines Montessori, Inc., a Montessori school with eleven branches spread all over Camarines Sur, Bacolod, and Masbate, offers elementary and secondary education according to the Montessori method.

All existing schools in the city, including those already named above, offer computer courses. Specialized computer schools have also mushroomed in the city due to popularity of computer courses, both degree and short-term. AMA, which has two branches in the city, (www.amaes.edu.ph) and STI College are among the more competitive and well-known computer school chains in the country that have established campuses in the city. Other specialized computer schools include Worldtech Resources Institute (WRI), Philippine Computer Foundation College (PCFC) and CCDI.

Transportation and Communication

Naga City is easily accessible by air and land transport. The city is served by Pili Domestic Airport which is located in the provincial capital of Pili. Flights from Manila Domestic Airport to Pili takes approximately 35-40 minutes. Air Philippines flies directly from MDA seven times a week. It can also be easily accessed by flying Cebu Pacific via Legazpi, a neighboring city that is just around an hour and a half drive to Naga City. By land, the city is a 7 to 8-hour ride from Manila via Andaya Highway or 10 hours via the Maharlika Highway. It is approximately 22 hours from Cebu with ferry transfers in Sorsogon, the southernmost province of Bicol. Daily rail services to and from Manila were provided by the Philippine National Railways but these were discontinued due to systems upgrading.

Naga is well served by several telephone and mobile phone companies present in the city. Bayantel and Digitel are the main telephone operators in the city. Other companies which compete keenly for the city's telecommunications market have also put up calling stations scattered all over the city. These are PLDT, PT&T, among others. Major mobile phone operators Globe, Smart, and Sun Cellular enjoy wide patronage.

ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation had expanded its network in Bicol by putting up ABS-CBN Naga. Local shows such as TV Patrol Bicol and Bicol Espesyal are aired in the whole region via ABS-CBN Regional Network Group which is stationed in the city. ABC5 also airs shows in the city through its affiliate station People's Broadcasting Network (PBN TV 5 Naga). Global Media Arts Broadcasting Network (GMA Broadcasting Network) has also shown interest in putting up its originating station in the city for its nationwide expansion.

Naga City has the most number of radio stations of any locality in the region, some of which operate 24 hours daily. These include RMN DWNX-FM, a very popular local radio in the FM band heard regionwide and even abroad through its interactive website. Other leading stations include ABS-CBN's My Only Radio 93.5 Naga and GMA's Campus Radio 101.5 Naga. Both stations have 10-kilowatt transmitters capable of regionwide broadcast.

The city is host to two local cable TV companies. These are Naga Cable TV and Caceres Cable TV serving almost the whole of the region. SkyCable is also available.

Television Networks

• Bicol Broadcasting System: Channel 2
• PBN Bicol: Channel 5
• GMA Network: Channel 7
• National Broadcasting Network: Channel 8
• ABS-CBN: Channel 11
• Studio 23: Channel 24
• ACQ-Kingdom Broadcasting Network: Channel 26
• Quality TeleVision: Channel 28
• Radio Mindanao Network:Channel 32

Radio Stations

AM Stations

• DWRB - 567 Radyo ng Bayan
• DZLL - 603 DZLL
• DWRN - 657 Radyo Pilipino
• DZLW - 711 Radyo Isarog
• DWNW - 756 IBC Radio
• DZGE - 855 Radyo Numero Uno
• DWAR - 891 Radyo Oragon
• DWMT - 981 DZRH Naga
• DZNG - 1044 Bombo Radyo

FM Stations

• DZTR - 89.5 The Beat
• DWMY - 90.3 Star FM
• DWNX - 91.1 RMN Naga
• DZLR - 91.9 Mixx FM
• DWAC - 93.5 MOR For Life!
• DWQJ - 95.1 Home Radio
• DZRB - 95.9 Mom's Radio
• DZOK - 97.5 OK FM
• DWRV - 98.3 The Mother's Touch
• DWYN - 99.1 Love Radio
• DWEB - 99.9 WEB
• DWQW - 101.5 Campus Radio
• DWQN - 104.7 Power 104
• DWBQ - 106.3 Energy FM

Local Newspapers

• Kaiba News and Features, KNF
• Bikol Reporter
• Bicol Mail
• Vox Bikol

Banking and Finance

Naga City has more than 50 bank branches. The city hosts the regional offices of Philippine National Bank (PNB), Metropolitan Bank and Trust Company (Metrobank), Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), Allied Banking Corporation, and Philippine Postal Savings Bank. A number of banks have several branches in the city, like Metrobank, RCBC, Equitable PCI Bank, Bank of the Philippine Islands, and Banco de Oro Universal Bank (BDO UniBank). A leading thrift bank, RCBC Savings Bank, enjoys wide patronage of both Filipino and Chinese businessmen. Robinsons Bank of the Gokongwei group has also set up its branch in the city. Two of the biggest rural banks in the country, Bank of Makati and the Golden 7 Bank (G7Bank), a consistent Most Outstanding Rural Bank awardee, are also found in the city. Two small albeit very active banks, Asia United Bank and Philippine Farmers Bank, are the two latest banks to open in the city.

Commerce

In 2006 Naga won the Most Business-Friendly City award for the third consecutive year..

Naga City has several commercial business districts (CBD's). It has a lifestyle center, three shopping malls plus a number of strip malls scattered at the heart of CBD-I, popularly known as Centro. Avenue Square along Magsaysay Avenue is Bicol's first and only lifestyle center. It has an ultramodern 800-seat convention center (Avenue Convention Plaza); a resto-music bar which serves as the "bootcamp" of aspiring local artists (Lolo's Music Bar); restaurants (Max's Restaurant, Naga Oriental Wok, Shakey's, Peaberry- with its trendy bar Lune, and Little Asia); a specialty coffee shop (The Coffee Beanery); dermatology clinic (Skin Systems); European salon (David's Salon); signature flip-flops shop (Havaianas); and nationwide franchising drugstore (Mercury Drug), among other well-known stores.

Avenue Plaza Hotel, Bicol's first and only boutique hotel also located along exciting Magsaysay Avenue, is presently undergoing construction and is slated to open for business in late 2007. It will cater to both local and foreign tourists and businessmen.

LCC Central Mall Naga; Robertson Mall; and Nagaland eMall, housing Robinsons Supermarket, are the city's other major shopping malls. Bichara Theater Mall; Emily Arcade; Divisoria Mall; and Paseo de Caceres, which has a Chinese-theme Roman Catholic chapel- Navidad de Naga Chapel - are just some of the city's strip malls.

SM Prime Holdings and Landco Pacific Corp. have both expressed interest in the city's capability of hosting bigger shopping complexes. SM has started to lease its first mall site in Bicol located at Naga's CBD-II while preparing construction plans. On the other hand, Landco is expected to start construction of its Pacific Mall Naga in mid-2007.

A number of restaurants, bars and bistros are found along Magsaysay Avenue, dubbed as Naga City's "Malate District". Chili Peppers, Bob Marlin, Grilling Point, Molino Grill, Juno's, ClubM8, and CocoLeaf are just some of the few exciting joints found there. Aside from these restobars that seem to sprout everywhere in Naga, numerous popular fastfood chain outlets abound like Jollibee, McDonald's, Chowking, Pizza Hut, Max's Restaurant, Greenwich, KFC, and Shakey's, among others.

Naga City offers a wide range of specialty restaurants such as Hokkien (casual Chinese), Makiyaki (Japanese), Peaberry (fine dining), Resto di San Giuseppe (casual yuppie), and Green Earth Cafe (health food). For coffee enthusiasts, coffeeshops have also sprung up in strategic places around the city, the more popular being Mudbugs Coffee & Co., Aljosh Cafe, Starmark Cafe, Beanbag Coffee,The Coffee Beanery, Cafe Frederico, Coco Cafe, Cafe Trevi, and Cafe R.

Naga City has several shops that open 24 hours a day. These nonstop businesses include Cody's and Lucky 9 convenience stores, Nalds and Biggs restaurants, Mercury and New South drugstores.

Naga's investor-friendly economy has encouraged growth and development of homegrown business chains like New South Star Drugstore, Graceland Foods Industries and Bigg's which are successfully competing nationwide with industry leaders Mercury Drug, Goldilock's and Jollibee, respectively.

Culture

Pre-Spanish

Indigenous people in Naga had their own culture before colonizers from Europe introduced western culture, particularly their own religion.

Colonial Spain Influence

The city celebrates the Feast of Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia Our Lady of Peñafrancia, the Patroness of the Bicol Region, starting second Friday of September each year. The start of the feast, which is the largest Marian devotion in the country, is signalled by a procession (called Traslacion) which transfers the centuries-old image of the Blessed Virgin Mary from its shrine at the Peñafrancia Basilica Minore to the 400-year old Naga Metropolitan Cathedral. Coinciding with nine days of novena prayer at the cathedral, the city celebrates with parades, pageants, street parties, singing contests, exhibits, concerts, and other activities. Finally, on the third Saturday of September, the image is returned shoulder-borne by so-called voyadores to the Basilica Minore de Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia via the historic Naga River.

Religion

The city is the center of Roman Catholicism in the region because it is the ecclesiastical seat of the Archdiocese of Caceres whose jurisdiction covers five suffragan dioceses -- Legazpi, Daet, Masbate, Sorsogon, and Virac and one prelature, Libmanan . This dominant faith is supported by the presence of old and influential Catholic institutions, from universities to churches, notably Ateneo de Naga University; Universidad de Sta. Isabel; Naga Metropolitan Cathedral; Basilica Minore de Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia; Peñafrancia Shrine; and Our Lady of Peñafrancia Museum. Moreover, every September each year for the past 300 years and still counting, the city has hosted and continues to host the country's largest Marian devotion, the annual 10-day Peñafrancia Festivities.

Other religions are represented by Iglesia ni Cristo, (INC) whose imposing church is a landmark in itself along Panganiban Drive; Seventh Day Adventist and Bible Baptist whose churches are located along exciting Magsaysay Avenue; while other Christians go to the Methodist Church which is among the old structures along Peñafrancia Avenue. There is also a medium concentration of Jesus Miracle Crusade in the City.

Major religions not to be left out are the Muslims with their own place of worship (mosque) at Greenland, Barangay Concepcion Pequeña; Hindus, with their colorful church along Basilica Road, Barangay Balatas; and Taoists, with their shrine along Lerma Street, Barangay Triangulo.

History

Before the coming of Spanish colonizers, Naga was already a flourishing village on the banks of the Naga River. It was an important village with comparatively sophisticated weaponry and surprisingly advanced culture.

For hundreds of years during the Spanish colonial era, what is today Naga was the center of trade, education and culture, and the seat of governmental and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Bicol.

In 1573, on his second expedition to this region, the conquistador Juan de Salcedo landed in a village and named it "Naga" because of the abundance of Narra trees ("Naga" in Bikol) about the place. In 1575, Captain Pedro de Chávez, the commander of the garrison left behind by Salcedo, founded on the site of the present business center (across the river from the original Naga) a Spanish city which he named la Ciudad de Cáceres, in honor of Francisco de Sande, the governor general and a native of the city of Cáceres in Spain. It was still by this name that it was identified in the papal bull of August 14, 1595 that erected the See of Cáceres (together with those of Cebú and Nueva Segovia) and made it the seat of the new bishopric.

In time, Spanish city and native village merged into one community and became popularly known as Nueva Cáceres, to distinguish it from its namesake in Spain. It had a city government as prescribed by Spanish law, with an ayuntamiento and cabildo of its own. At the beginning of the 17th century, there were only five other ciudades in the Philippines. Nueva Cáceres remained the capital of the Ambos Camarines provinces and later of the Camarines Sur province until the formal creation of the independent chartered city of Naga under the Philippine Republic.

The bishops of Cáceres occupied a unique place in the Philippine Catholic hierarchy during most of the Spanish regime. By virtue of the papal bull of Gregory XIII, ecclesiastical cases originating in the Spanish Indies, which ordinarily were appealable to the Pope, were ordered to be terminated there and no longer elevated to Rome. Decisions of bishops were made appealable to the archbishop and those of the latter to the bishop of the nearest see. Thus, in the Philippines, the decisions of the archbishop of Manila were subject to review by the bishop of Cáceres whose jurisdiction then extended to the province of Tayabas (present-day Quezon). In this sense, bishops of Bikol were delegates of the Pope and could be considered primates of the Church of the Philippines.

This was the reason why bishops of Cáceres and archbishop of Manila were sometimes engaged in interesting controversies in the sensational Naga case and in such issues as canonical visitation and the secularization of the parishes. As papal delegate, Bishop Francisco Gaínza, then concurrently bishop of Cáceres, sat in the special ecclesiastical tribunal which passed upon the civil authorities' petition to divest Fathers Burgos, Gómez, and Zamora of their priestly dignity. Gaínza did not only refuse the petition but also urged their pardon.

With the advent of the American rule, it was reduced to a municipality. In 1919, it lost its Spanish name and became officially known as Naga. It acquired its present city charter in 1948, and its city government was inaugurated on December 15 of the same year by virtue of Republic Act No. 305. Rep. Juan Q. Miranda sponsored this legislative act which put flesh into the city's bid to become among the only few independent component cities in the country.

Situated at the center of the Bikol peninsula and surrounded on all sides by rich agricultural, forest and fishing areas, Naga is also at the confluence of the Naga and Bikol Rivers. Thus, it has always been an ideal place for trade, and as center for schools and church and government offices.

Barangays

Naga is politically subdivided into 27 barangays.

See also

• List of television and radio stations in Naga City

External links

• Official website of Naga City
• Philippine Standard Geographic Code
• 2000 Philippine Census Information

v t e Province of Camarines Sur
Pili (capital) Naga (largest city)
Municipalities	Baao Balatan Bato Bombon Buhi Bula Cabusao Calabanga Camaligan Canaman Caramoan Del Gallego Gainza Garchitorena Goa Lagonoy Libmanan Lupi Magarao Milaor Minalabac Nabua Ocampo Pamplona Pasacao Pili Presentacion Ragay Sagñay San Fernando San Jose Sipocot Siruma Tigaon Tinambac
Component city	Iriga
Independent component city	Naga (Administratively independent from the province but grouped under Camarines Sur by the Philippine Statistics Authority.)

• Cities in the Philippines