Antipolo Big House
Antipolo is in the northern half of Rizal Province, close to its meridional center. It is located on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range. Much of the city sits on a plateau averaging 200 meters. It has the second-largest city area in the province, with an area of 156.68 km². The northern and southern sections of the city are in the dense forest areas of the Sierra Madre.
Antipolo is landlocked; it is bounded to the north by San Mateo and Rodriguez, to the east by Tanay, to the south by Angono, Taytay and Teresa, and to the west by Cainta and Marikina City in Metro Manila.
The Bitukang Manok of Pasig—also known as the Parian Creek—had once linked the Marikina River with the Antipolo River. Before the Manggahan Floodway was built in 1986.[22] The Parian Creek was actually connected to the Sapang Bato-Buli Creek (which serves as the boundary between Pasig’s barangays Dela Paz-Manggahan-Rosario-Santa Lucia and the Municipality of Cainta), the Kasibulan Creek (situated at Vista Verde, Barangay San Isidro, Cainta), the Palanas Creek (leaving Antipolo through Barangay Muntindilao), the Bulaw Creek (on Barangay Mambungan, besides the Valley Golf and Country Club), and the “Hinulugang Taktak” Falls of Barangay Dela Paz (fed by the Taktak Creek passing close to the Antipolo town square), thus being the detached and long-abandoned Antipolo River.
From the early 17th century up to the period of Japanese imperialism, over a thousand Catholic devotees coming from “Maynilad” (Manila), “Hacienda Pineda” (Pasay), “San Juan del Monte”, “Hacienda de Mandaloyon” (Mandaluyong), “Hacienda Mariquina” (Marikina), “Barrio Pateros”, “Pueblo de Tagig” (Taguig), and “San Pedro de Macati” (Makati), followed the trail of the Parian Creek to the Pilgrimage Cathedral on the mountainous pueblo of Antipolo, Morong (the present-day Rizal Province).
The Antipoleños and several locals from the far-reached barrios of “Poblacion de San Mateo”, “Montalban” (Rodriguez), “Monte de Tanhai” (Tanay), “Santa Rosa-Oroquieta” (Teresa), and “Punta Ibayo” (Baras), had also navigated this freshwater creek once to go down to the vast “Kapatagan” (Rice plains) of lowland Pasig. Even the marian processions of the Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage passed this route back and forth eleven times.
The creek was also used during the British occupation of Manila from 1762 to 1764 by the British Army, under the leadership of General William Draper and Vice Admiral Sir Samuel Cornish, 1st Baronet, to transport their troops (including the Sepoys they brought from India) upstream to take over the nearby forest-surrounded villages of Cainta and Taytay. They even did an ambush at the “Plaza Central” in front of the Pasig Cathedral, and turned the Roman Catholic parish into their military headquarters, with the church’s fortress-like “campanilla” (belfry) serving as a watchtower against Spanish defenders sailing from the walled city of Intramuros via the Pasig River.
The Sepoys turned against their British lieutenants and sided with the combined forces of the Spanish conquistadors (assigned by the Governor-General Simon de Anda y Salazar), local rice farmers, fisherfolk, and Chinese traders. After the British invasion, the Sepoys remained and intermarried with Filipina women, which explains the Indian features of some of today’s citizens of Pasig, especially Cainta and Taytay.