Paoay Church

The Paoay Church, formally the Saint Augustine Parish Church, is a sixteenth-century Roman Catholic church in Ilocos Norte that stands as one of the finest examples of Earthquake Baroque architecture in the Philippines, a style that integrates massive free-standing buttresses to resist seismic forces. Its UNESCO World Heritage status as part of the Baroque Churches of the Philippines reflects both its architectural rarity and its state of preservation. The church is set against a backdrop of flat sugarcane fields and a quiet lake, providing clean compositional lines for photography.