Museums play a big role in reminding us of how we grow as a people.

Through arts, installations, and

precious artifacts, they awaken our desire to know more about our rich culture, our history, and our
environment, which make up our national identity.
The National Museum of the Philippines is an umbrella government organization that oversees a
number of national museums in the Philippines including ethnographic, anthropological, archaeological
and visual arts collectionsThis grand exhibit house features the country's most historic works of culture
and national heritage, including the paintings of heralded Philippine artist Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.
The museum displays mostly new material, and even old material that have not been on display
since the early 1990s – so there’s definitely a lot of exciting pieces to see. Here are just some of
them:
One of the most popular museums in the country is the National Museum of Natural History, which was
officially opened to the public in May 2018. Located in Rizal Park, it is part of the National Museum
Complex which boasts three other attractions: the National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum
of Anthropology, and the National Planetarium.
Completed in the 1940s, it was formerly called Agriculture and Commerce Building. Before it became the
National Museum of Natural History, the building used to be the headquarters of the Department of
Tourism until 2015.
We recently had the opportunity to finally visit! Here are some tips to make your time inside the
museum smooth and hassle-free!
First floor
The DNA Tree of Life
Soaring six storeys high, this is the museum’s definitive architectural feature, the locus around
which the entire complex revolves. Conceptualized by architect and heritage conservation
advocate Dominic Galicia, the DNA Tree of Life has been described as a double-helix steel
structure that rises and extends into a distinctive pattern of leaves and branches that provide a
canopy for the museum’s courtyard. Because it houses a scenic elevator, it also serves as one of
the access points to the museum’s top floor. From there, visitors can eventually start their tour
at the galleries on the fifth floor and find their way to the lower floors via ramps or stairs.
Take the scenic elevator at the Museum Foundation of the Philippines
Tree of Life Foyer on Level 1.
Second floor
Lolong
This is a museum to celebrate our country’s flora and fauna, so how else to impress but through
a creature that broke into the Guinness Book of World Records six years ago as the largest
crocodile in captivity?

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(SPOT.ph) A little less than a week since it formally opened to the public on May 18, and
already more than 20,000 visitors have walked through the elegant wooden portals of
the National Museum of Natural History. The line to enter moves briskly enough, but it
still takes about 30 minutes until you actually find your way into its stunning sunlit courtyard.
Thankfully, pretty strong cell phone reception means you can actually accomplish some work as
you snake your way through the portico of the former Department of Tourism building. Or you
could opt to enjoy the view of larger-than-life Lapu Lapu looming over Agrifina Circle; at this
time of the year—fiesta season—the bronze sculpture stands surrounded by jaunty, multi-
hued banderitasfluttering in the sizzling heat.

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There might be a bit of a wait to get in, but the view will be worth it.

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The National Museum of Natural History is housed in the building formerly occupied
by the Department of Tourism.

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The crowd on a Thursday morning

In the absence of any written handouts and location maps, once you make your way in, try and
catch one of the museum guides (they’re either in navy-blue T-shirts or bright-yellow polo
shirts), to give you a few tips. One of them, Alvin, tells us that for now, only three floors are
open to the public. Start from the third level, and make your way down.
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What are the best things to see?

The building itself

As you stroll through the galleries, you can’t help but marvel at the building’s Neoclassical
architecture and its details. The original structure did not survive the American bombs that
levelled the city of Manila in 1945. As a plaque at the entrance tells us, the American
government paid for the building’s rehabilitation in 1946, keeping to the plans of the original
architect, Antonio Toledo. The same architect also built the nearby Manila City Hall.

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Under the shadow of the DNA Tree of Life

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The building itself, and the details within, are already worth the visit.

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IMAGE Trickie C. Lopa

Enjoy the rooms and their stately proportions. Take note of the graceful ironwork on the
windows and on the balusters of the main staircase at the Dr. Jose Rizal foyer. Note the
arches and the lintels, the wainscoting, the pendant lights, the patterns on the marble floors.
Such refined touches speak of the sensibilities of another era that no mall can ever replicate.

Visitors can also glean much about the history of the natural sciences in the Philippines via the
plaques that give information on the life of the personalities for whom the corridors and foyers
are named. For instance, did you know that an English naturalist, John Whitehead,
discovered what we now know as the Philippine Eagle? He requested that it carry the name of
his father Jefferey, thus its scientific name of Pithoecophaga jefferyi.
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The DNA Tree of Life

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The double-helix structure houses a scenic elevator.

IMAGE Trickie C. Lopa

The DNA Tree of Life
Soaring six storeys high, this is the museum’s definitive architectural feature, the locus around
which the entire complex revolves. Conceptualized by architect and heritage conservation
advocate Dominic Galicia, the DNA Tree of Life has been described as a double-helix steel
structure that rises and extends into a distinctive pattern of leaves and branches that provide a
canopy for the museum’s courtyard. Because it houses a scenic elevator, it also serves as one of
the access points to the museum’s top floor. From there, visitors can eventually start their tour
at the galleries on the fifth floor and find their way to the lower floors via ramps or stairs.

Take the scenic elevator at the Museum Foundation of the Philippines Tree of
Life Foyer on Level 1.

Lolong
This is a museum to celebrate our country’s flora and fauna, so how else to impress but through
a creature that broke into the Guinness Book of World Records six years ago as the largest
crocodile in captivity?
Lolong, a male Saltwater Crocodile, made headlines in 2011 after his capture in the Agusan del
Sur town of Bunawan. His replica, which welcomes visitors right inside the museum’s main
entrance, give us an idea of how he appeared in life, the 6.17-meter, 1,075-kilogram heft that
terrified a town into hiring a crocodile hunter. They blamed him for human and carabao deaths.
Lolong's skeleton floats above the Ayala Hall.(6.7)meters
At another gallery, the grand Ayala Hall, Lolong’s skeleton floats above visitors,
suspended from the ceiling. His skin, however, lies preserved within the museum’s
conservation labs. Think what Hermes and Gucci could make with that!
Third attraction
The recreation of the Nilad mangrove
Historians have long contended that one plausible origin of the name Manila could have
come from the abundance of the Nilad tree on the banks of the Pasig river: May nilad =
Maynilad = Maynila.

Hard to imagine that this populous metropolis, jam-packed with a chaotic amalgamation
of concrete, steel, and whatnot, once harbored density of the verdant sort. An
interactive installation in the museum’s third level allows visitors to experience what it
would have been like to discover pre-Hispanic Manila, to walk through a mangrove of
the white flowered Nilad and encounter its natural inhabitants.

Fourth attraction

For enthusiasts, the National Museum collection contains a series of oil

paintings commissioned by one of its former directors, the Father of Philippine
Orchidology, Dr. Eduardo Quisumbing, that document the different varieties
of orchids around the country. Artist and art professor Tomas Bernardo, who
once upon a time restored the Botong Francisco Philippine General Hospital
murals that also belong to the National Museum, executed the paintings
between 1948 and 1960.

Flora de Filipinas and the Spot-billed Pelican

Can you imagine how obsessive and dedicated Fr. Manuel Blanco must
have been? Forty years in the Philippines (he died in Manila in 1845),
traveling throughout our archipelago, and collecting plant samples along the
way. We owe this Augustinian friar the first comprehensive research on our
botanica, Flora de Filipinas, a compendium of which he published in 1837 and
1845.

The museum displays the deluxe third edition of Fr. Blanco’s work, published
and updated posthumously. This version of 1877-1883, also called the Gran
Edicion, contains 477 lithographs illustrated by such renowned names
as Félix Resurrección Hidalgo and Felix Pardo de Tavera, among others.
Bound in red morocco leather, its cover engraved in gilt, and one of only 500
copies printed, a similar edition realized U.S. $35,000 at a Christie’s auction of
rare books in 2009.

Facsimiles of the botanicals found in the book line the gallery walls, along with
the biographies of pioneering botanists significant to Philippine natural history.
Two stations inside the same room allow visitors to work on their own
botanical illustrations, quite popular with both kids and adults.

At the center of the gallery stands a vitrine that holds two stuffed birds, one of
them a magnificent spot-billed pelican. The exhibit label informs us that while
it may seem a curiosity today, this pelican was a common sight in certain
localities of Luzon at the turn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, we lost the
species to extinction sometime in the 1940s.

your tour guide for today- Vash gid na segodnya

good day tourist my name is junalyn your tour guide for today lets start our tour here in-
dobryy den' turist menya zovut junalyn vash gid na segodnya davayte nachnem nash tur zdes'

i hope you enjoy our tour thankyou and godbless

goodbye- YA nadeyus', vam ponravitsya nash tur spasibo i bog Proshchay(iya nadyos van
panrabitsya nash tur spasiba I bog prashey)