Marikina has been hailed as the shoe capital of the Philippines. That's why the Shoe Museum in Marikina has kept alive the country's hand-made shoe culture.

Situated east of Manila, Marikina city is the center of Philippines' shoes-making industry. Marikina has become the center of shoes-making industry since the 1880s. The shoes here are not only reliable in quality, but also novel in pattern.

The locally designed snakeskin shoes were quite fashionable in New York in the 1930s and the 1940s.

Located in a 300-year-old Spanish-style building, Marikina Shoe Museum is the first and only museum featuring shoes in the Philippines.

Displayed in the museum are not only shoes collected from within the country, but also brand-name products from other countries, as well a various types of shoes with historical value gathered from around the world. And the most valuable shoes treasured by the museum are those from the celebrities in the Philippines.

Among the exhibits, the most attractive is a showcase with more than 800 pairs of shoes--all from the former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos.

In this age of industrialization, Marikina's ancient tradition of making shoes by hand is gradually fading, and the scene of a whole town participating in the manual shoe-making competition is nowhere to be seen. But the shoe museum still maintains its charm, taking us back to the past, and helping us relive the fascinating traditional culture of manual shoe-making.

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