The Ruins, Talisay

Mariano Ledesma Lacson built this house on his sugar estate in the 1900s for his wife, who had died young, and the family lived in it for a generation. It was gutted by fire in the 1940s and never rebuilt, leaving the frame: two storeys of oxidised concrete, columns, arcades, window openings and a broad staircase standing open to the sky in the middle of cane fields. The concrete was mixed with egg white, which is why the surface still has a faint sheen. It is lit at night, and the estate has been landscaped around it with lawns and a fountain, which makes it half monument and half event venue.

What you actually see

• The standing frame - two floors of columns and arcades with nothing behind the openings but sky.
• The staircase - the main stair rising into an upper floor that is no longer there.
• The M monograms - the owner's initial cast into the posts and balustrades throughout.
• The cane fields - the working sugar landscape the estate sits in, visible from the upper terrace.

When to go

Late afternoon into dusk is the point: the light warms the concrete and the floodlights come on around sunset. It stays open into the evening. December to May is dry. Weekends and holidays bring wedding shoots and function bookings that can partly close off the ground floor.

Honest expectations

It is one building and you will have seen it in twenty minutes. The entry fee is high for what it is, and the site has been heavily commercialised with a cafe, souvenir stalls, a mini golf course and constant photo shoots on the stairs. Getting there from Bacolod means a taxi or a chain of jeepneys and tricycles. Go for sunset or do not bother.

Nearby

Silay's heritage houses are twenty minutes north; Bacolod city and its markets are south.