This Museum Was Once A Japanese Garrison, An Equestrian's Residence, a Paresan

(SPOT.ph) There’s a new must-visit museum just an hour’s drive away from Manila, and it’s a charming Spanish colonial structure called Sarayba House. Located in historic and very well maintained General Trias, a first class municipality and among the richest LGUs in Cavite, this new historical landmark has had many incarnations since it was built in the late 19th century.

Originally the residence of the couple José Trias and his wife María Dolores Gómez, grandparents of General Mariano Trias, first Vice President of the Philippine revolutionary government, it has also become a garrison during the Japanese occupation, a school in the post-war years, an equestrian’s residence, and even a paresan in the more recent past.

“Yes, the house was fondly known among locals as the Bahay Kastila Eatery,” the architect Gerard Lico who led the structure’s restoration efforts tells SPOT.ph. “When we first visited the site, the caretakers had set up a couple of simple tents in the yard, and the place had become a modest paresan serving affordable meals. Employees from City Hall, students and teachers from nearby schools, and residents from the neighborhood would regularly come here—not just to eat, but to gather.”

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Now it’s been restored to its former glory—within the limits of available materials and historical references, of course. Outside, it’s a stately bahay na bato, with its stone ground floor walls providing the foundation for the wooden upper half of the house. Inside, it's softer, especially on the second floor, in the bedroom and spacious sala that overlooks the street, offering an impressive proof of the remarkable taste and creativity possessed by the original owners of the house. This is shown in the ternos on display, the Tiffany blue walls, and the paintings of fruits and provincial life on the corners of the jewel-shaped ceilings.

Despite its many years of abandonment, the two-storey structure has always been part of the city’s life. Across the Sarayba House is the plaza, next to which is the City Hall. If you’re standing from the second floor window that looks to the main street, train your eyes toward the right and you’ll spot San Francisco de Malabon Parish Church, a beautiful structure named thus because San Francisco de Malabon was also what General Trias used to be called. In short, the Sarayba House is right smack where people gathered, which was how houses of political importance were mapped out during colonial times.

Being once a pares house is not a source of shame for this storied landmark; if anything it’s an interesting episode in step with the house’s history and character. “In a quiet but meaningful way, this everyday use kept the house alive during years of neglect. Rather than being abandoned or sealed off, the Sarayba House remained part of the daily rhythm of the community—a familiar stop, a shared space,” says Gerard Lico. “That continuity mattered greatly to us in the restoration. When the house was eventually conserved and transformed into a museum, it did not displace memory; it built upon it. The Sarayba House had always been lived in, used, and loved—and the paresan was simply one more chapter in its long, communal life.”

We shot Lico more questions about the house’s history, its owners, and the restoration work that brought this Cavite jewel back to its shiny, polished self—a landmark ready to give history enthusiasts and heritage conservationists another compelling reason to leave Metro Manila for a bit and drive to less hurried and quieter Gen Tri.

GERARD LICO: I came to know of the Sarayba Ancestral House when the City Government of General Trias, in partnership with the Sarayba family, began searching for conservation specialists to address the long abandonment of the property. Mayor Luis Ferrer IV, himself a descendant of the original owners, articulated a clear vision: to restore the house not merely as an artifact, but as a cultural anchor—a living heritage site that could reclaim its place in the civic memory of the city.

The city was seeking a conservation approach grounded in both scholarship and practice. My previous work in the conservation and adaptive reuse of historic landmarks for local governments, particularly in Valenzuela City and Quezon City, aligned closely with this agenda. Through the recommendation of Jeffery Lubang, a fellow scholar and my former classmate in the UP Master’s program in Art History, I was invited to take part in what has since become a deeply meaningful restoration journey.

GL: María Dolores occupies a particularly significant place in Philippine history—not only as the matriarch of a distinguished Caviteño family, but also as the sister of Fr. Mariano Gómez, one of the three martyred priests of Gomburza. Through her, the house is intimately connected to the intertwined narratives of faith, reform, and the awakening of national consciousness in the late nineteenth century.

While historical records tend to privilege public acts over private lives, what emerges from the house itself is a portrait of quiet refinement and strength. The scale of the residence, its painted ceilings, devotional objects, and domestic furnishings suggest a household shaped by piety, education, and civic responsibility—values passed down through generations. The dresses displayed in one of the cuartos belonged to Doña Ineng Sarayba-Pascual, one of their great-granddaughters, who continues to reside in Farmacia Sarayba, another family ancestral house that today accommodates both a pharmacy and a bank.

These heirlooms remind us that the Sarayba House is not only a monument of the past, but part of a living lineage, where memory, family, and place remain deeply intertwined.

GL: The Sarayba Ancestral House was constructed in the late nineteenth century, making it one of the oldest surviving residences in General Trias. Over time, it served multiple functions that mirror the town’s historical trajectory. During the Second World War, it was used as a Japanese garrison, and in the postwar years, it temporarily functioned as a school. These changing uses explain the presence of later additions to the property, including a cuadra for horses. One descendant shared with our team that the last resident of the house was an equestrian, and the family has preserved her original saddle and riding equipment, providing a tangible link to the house’s more recent domestic life.

Architecturally, the house is a distinguished example of the bahay na bato, shaped by Spanish colonial planning principles and indigenous Filipino building traditions. Its large capiz window panels, ventanillas, and generous openings allow for cross-ventilation, while high ceilings help release trapped heat—demonstrating an intuitive climatic responsiveness.

Structurally, the house relies on a resilient nailless wooden framing system, with unprocessed timber posts that carry the roof load continuously from the ground upward. The adobe masonry walls of the ground floor function as a stone skirt, enclosing and concealing these wooden “legs” while protecting them from moisture and impact. This system explains why the house could theoretically stand even without its stone enclosures.

One of the most remarkable interior features is the painted canvas ceiling, decorated with floral and foliage motifs interspersed with bucolic, provincial scenes. Rare in surviving domestic architecture, this ceiling transforms the interior into a poetic landscape, revealing the household’s refined taste and the quiet artistry that once animated everyday life. Together, these architectural, structural, and artistic elements affirm the Sarayba House not only as a historic dwelling, but as a resilient and eloquent expression of Filipino vernacular intelligence.

GL: The one-year conservation process focused first on structural stabilization and material honesty. The roof was replaced, damaged elements were repaired rather than indiscriminately renewed, and lime plaster was reintroduced in place of incompatible cement. The bahay na bato’s resilient system—nailless wooden framing and unprocessed timber posts rising from the ground and concealed by adobe masonry walls—was respected and reinforced. Engineering supervision was led by Engr. Jero Pascual, a heritage professional who worked closely with me to ensure that structural safety, historic integrity, and interior curation were treated as a single, inseparable task.

One of the most delicate and meaningful interventions involved the painted canvas ceiling. The original ceiling was already beyond repair—brittle, fragmented, and structurally unsalvageable. It was therefore replaced with a similar canvas material, guided by fragments that survived. Our architect-muralist Brylle Patiu reinterpreted the floral, bucolic, and devotional iconography as faithfully as possible, not as imitation but as informed continuity. Portions of the original painted canvas are now displayed within the house, allowing visitors to see both the fragility of the original and the discipline of the reconstruction—an honest dialogue between loss and renewal.

What ultimately makes the Sarayba House important is not only its age or lineage, but its transformation into a shared civic inheritance. The restored interiors—bathed in light through capiz windows, ventilated by transoms, animated by color, wood, and memory—now invite the public without intimidation. This project embodies a belief I hold deeply: that heritage conservation is not an elitist exercise, but a public act rooted in pedagogy, generosity, and justice.

GL: The property remains under the ownership of the Trias–Sarayba family. According to the caretakers, the estate originally encompassed nearly one hectare before it was gradually subdivided among descendants over time. Despite these changes, the ancestral house itself survived—an increasingly rare circumstance in the city’s rapidly transforming urban landscape.

The initiative to convert the house into a museum came from the City Government of General Trias, which recognized the Sarayba House as one of the city’s oldest and most culturally significant residences. There was a strong resolve to prevent it from suffering the same fate as the ancestral house of General Mariano Trias, which was demolished earlier. To ensure both protection and public access, the city entered into a usufruct agreement with the owners, allowing the house to be conserved and adapted as a city museum—a collaborative model that safeguards private ownership while affirming the house’s role as shared civic heritage.

GL: Following the soft opening (this December), the museum will temporarily close to allow the continuation of development works and the completion of its full interpretive and visitor facilities. The formal opening to the public is scheduled for 2026, once these enhancements are in place.

Visitors can look forward to a carefully curated museum experience, the opening of a Heritage Café, and a year-long program of cultural and educational activities being planned by the City Tourism Office. We invite the public to stay tuned as the Sarayba Ancestral House prepares to reopen as a fully realized heritage destination for General Trias.

The Sarayba Ancestral House is opening to the public in 2026. It's located in Prinza Street, General Trias, Cavite City.

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