PAYAG

This nipa hut (locally known as Payag) mounted along the gate of Basilica del Sto. Niño in Osmeña blvd., depicts the scene when, after 44 years, the Legazpi-Urdaneta Expedition arrived in Cebu and providentially discovered (Pagkakaplag) the wooden image of the Holy Child Santo Niño in a partially scorched hut somewhere in Brgy. San Nicolas Proper on April 28, 1565.

Spanish Armada’s leader Ferdinand Magellan, in his accidental discovery of Cebu in 1521, was the one who gave the same wooden image of Santo Niño to Queen Juana upon her ardent wish to have it in place of her local deities.