Casa Gorodo Museum

Casa Gorodo is a family home built in the 1850s by Alejandro Reynes y Rosales. It then passed to the Gorodo family, which occupied the house for four generations. It was acquired by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation in 1979 and fully restored before opening to the public in 1983.

The house was originally quite small, orginally just the block closest to the street, but grew over time with the family. The ground floor is full of store-rooms and places for the animals that provided transportation, later replaced by automobiles in the same space. The second floor is where the family lived. A single main room runs the entire length down the middle of the house. Off one side of this is a covered balcony. The other side is a sequence of rooms, which includes the master bedroom, a library, chapel and the kitchen.

The house is very elegant and well restored. It's a very good glimpse into how the Spanish elites lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The house makes a stark contrast to the Yap San Diego house, which is just around the corner.

The museum is open 9am to 5pm Monday through Saturday. There is an entrance fee, currently 100 to 150 Pesos. At the exit is a coffee shop run by local chain Bo's.