José Rizal Memorial Protected Landscape

The José Rizal Memorial Protected Landscape, also known as the Rizal Park and Shrine, is a protected landscape and memorial to the Philippines' national hero located in the city of Dapitan on the island of Mindanao. It preserves the farm site in barrio Talisay where José Rizal was exiled for four years from 1892-1896 after being accused of sedition and plotting the Philippine revolution in Manila by the Spanish colonial authorities. The protected area was established in 1940 as the Rizal National Park covering an initial area of through Proclamation No. 616 signed by President Manuel Luis Quezon. In 2000, it was enlarged to its present size of with a buffer zone of and was declared a protected landscape under the National Integrated Protected Areas System through Proclamation No. 279.The José Rizal Memorial Protected Landscape occupies a hilly peninsula facing the Dapitan Bay in Zamboanga del Norte. It is located in the seaside barangay of Talisay, about a kilometer northwest from the Dapitan city proper.HistoryThe 16ha estate in Talisay was purchased by Rizal for P4,000 after winning the Reales Loterías Españolas de Filipinas two months after arriving in Dapitan. Rizal built houses in the site, started a farm, put up a school for boys, and built a hospital where he could practice medicine and treat the poor for free. For four years, he worked as a rural physician, farmer, merchant, inventor, painter, sculptor, archaeologist, linguist, teacher, architect, poet, biologist and environmentalist. His mother, Teodora Alonso, sisters and other relatives would later on come to live with him in the farm. In 1897, after Rizal was executed, these properties were confiscated by the Spanish colonial government as indemnity to the state and transferred to the custody of Don Cosme Borromeo. The site was then converted into a public park in 1913 with the structures built by Rizal reconstructed on their original sites.