Before the arrival of the Spaniards, Cebu, then known as Zebu or Zubu, was a thriving fishing village and a busy trading post, with trade routes to China, Siam, Arabia as well as the nearby Malay islands.

The Magellan Expedition

On April 7, 1521, the great Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan landed on Cebu island. He was on expedition under the command of the Spanish king whose goal was to search for the fabled island of Moluccas and to see about expanding the Spanish territory to the Orient.

The natives of Cebu, under the leadership of the chieftain, Rajah Humabon , were a friendly people and allowed the foreigners to their land. It was not long before the Spanish friars who came with Magellan started preaching Christianity to the pagan natives. In reverence to the Christian God, Magellan planted a large wooden cross and the first Holy Mass held on Philippine soil took place on the shores of Limasawa. It was also during this time that the Rajah, accompanied by some 400 natives, were converted into Christianity.

The First Filipino Christian

To honor the Spanish king, the chieftain of Cebu and his wife were renamed Carlos and Juana, after Juan Carlos I of Spain. As a gesture of goodwill, the Spaniards gave Reina Juana an image of the child Jesus, the Santo Niño, which became the island's patron saint. After becoming an ally of Humabon, Magellan attempted to win over Gat Lapu-Lapu of nearby Mactan Island, but Lapu-Lapu, unlike his cousin Humabon, did not take well to the Spaniards. The Battle of Mactan erupted and Magellan was killed on the shores of the island, leaving his second-in-command, Sebastian del Cano to take the remainder of his ship and crew back to Spain. It became known as the First Circumnavigation of the World and Ferdinand Magellan, as the commander of the expedition, the First Man to Circumnavigate the World.

The Legazpi-Urdaneta Expedition

Forty-four years later, in April 27, 1565, Miguel López de Legazpi together with Friar Andres de Urdaneta declared that the Spanish crown succeeded in colonizing the islands. Legazpi bombarded the palisades of chieftain Rajah Tupas and destroyed the village. He later rebuilt it and called it Villa del Santisimo Nombre de Jesus. Thus, in 1571, it became the first Spanish city established by the Spanish Cortes in the Philippines.

On August 14, 1565, Cebu / Santisimo Nombre de Jesus was detached from the Catholic diocese of Manila and became a diocese of its own. Three centuries later, in April 1898 marked the end of the Spanish era and the onset of the American regime. In 1901, Cebu became a municipality and on February 24, 1937 became a chartered city.

Cebu, being the most densely populated island in the country, served as a vital Japanese base during the Japanese occupation in World War II which began with the landing of the Japanese Imperial Army on April 1942. Three years later on March 1945, an American force landed and liberated the city from the Japanese.