Philippines' Summer Capital — pine forests, strawberries, and benguet coffee at 1,500m
Baguio is the Philippines' only mountain city, perched at 1,500 metres in the Cordillera mountain range and permanently 10°C cooler than Manila — the reason the American colonial government established it as the country's Summer Capital in 1903 and built Burnham Park, the government buildings, and the vacation mansions that still stand here. The Session Road weekend market is one of the Philippines' most atmospheric food corridors: Baguio strawberries (one of only two strawberry-growing regions in Southeast Asia), benguet coffee, pinikpikan (mountain chicken stew), and etag (Igorot smoked cur…
The Ibaloi indigenous people farmed the Baguio valley ('place of moss') for centuries before the Spanish encountered the area in the late 18th century. American colonial engineer Daniel Burnham (of Chicago's famous city plan) was commissioned to design Baguio in 1905, creating a formal city plan with parks, roads, and government buildings that became the United States' most ambitious colonial urban project in Asia. The city was devastated by Japanese occupation and the 1945 liberation battle; it was almost completely rebuilt but retained its colonial-era layout. A 1990 earthquake (7.8 magnitu…