Balayan's cheerful checkerboard chapel

The mortuary chapel of Balayan. Apart from its historical value, it is also an architectural delight.

Apart from its walls, the other attraction of Balayan, Batangas' cemetery on a hill is its mortuary chapel. Built in 1887, the structure is unusually large for chapels of this type. 

The architecture follows a common colonial-era template: a naive rendition of a Renaissance-style facade composed of engaged pillars topped by a broad triangular pediment. But the facade's severity is thwarted by something more cheerful: a pronounced Gothic-style portal. 

Bearing in mind the date of construction, was the pointed-arch portal influenced by the Gothic revival then unfolding in the Philippines? The famous San Sebastian church, the revival's landmark icon, was being assembled during the same time. The Gothic feel extends to the lancet-type windows on the side walls.

The inside of the chapel is a pleasant surprise. Apart from being wide and spacious, the chapel boasts of a harlequin tile floor, a diagonal checkerboard pattern highly favored during the latter part of the 19th century. At the rear wall is a whitewashed stone retablo.

The chapel's original roof is gone, as evidenced by the current roof's low height, so low in fact that one can see the pointed tip within the pediment's central circular opening.

All in all, Balayan's mortuary chapel is an outstanding example of 19th century cemetery architecture, and thus truly a treasure like the town's landmark church and ancestral houses.