A RECENT visit to Vigan with a foreign colleague on a mission to assess the efforts to conserve the town by the municipal officials and local residents since 1987 turned out to be much more than just doing a survey.

We realized that the charm of Vigan began to take hold the instant we checked into Gordion Inn, a delightful bed-and-breakfast inn tucked under the high ceilings of vast ground floor in a stately century-old home. Its brick café overlooking a luxuriant garden patio offered the perfect vignette of the 19th-century scenes that Vigan is all about. What better introduction could there be to the quality of life in this fascinating town?

After walking the entire historic center of Vigan for a firsthand look at the town, and after a round of meetings with town officials, the clergy, businessmen and private homeowners, the extent of the conservation activities were apparent.

What became more apparent was that the conservation of Vigan was beyond just taking care of the old structures but that the life that continues to go on within those structures must be kept. After all, what good are well-conserved heritage structures that stand empty without any life in them?

The first effort to conserve the historic structures of Vigan started in 1987 when the National Museum assisted a group of concerned residents to produce an inventory of heritage houses. It listed close to 190 houses.

In 1996, another survey done by the Save Vigan Ancestral Homes Association (SVAHAI), by a grant from the Toyota Foundation, listed approximately 120 homes.

However, it does not take an inventory to see that a good number of the heritage homes in the town have disappeared and are endangered. Walking in the town gives enough evidence of the destruction.

Now that destruction is being controlled. More people have become aware of the need and have become involved in conservation today than the handful crying out in 1987. Now conservation is one of the primary topics.

What makes the Vigan conservation movement noteworthy is that it has always been spearheaded by NGOs, but always with strong municipal government support that continues to grow with so much enthusiasm and vigor.

Reinforcing the NGO conservation programs, the Sangguniang Bayan of Vigan responded by enacting municipal ordinances specifying the historic center boundaries of the town where structures must be strictly conserved. Another ordinance reaffirms that all conservation must be done in accordance with technically accepted principles. In support of the latter, Unesco and SVAHAI have written and will soon publish a handbook that outlines the conservation procedures to be used.

Public awareness and government mechanisms are clearly falling into place in Vigan to protect its heritage, even if some perceive it as happening too slowly.

More important, to signify the commitment of the municipal government of Vigan to conservation, the town submitted a dossier in 1998 that nominates their town for the Unesco World Heritage Listing. Inscription in the prestigious listing will at last accord Vigan the well-deserved status of being one of the most historically significant urban areas in the globe.

Vigan is definitely in the same league of uniqueness and high artistic character as Lijang in China, San Gimigniano in Italy, and Potosi in Mexico.

The special allure of the town, as all Filipinos know, is that Vigan is where the country's largest collection of Hispanic-era architecture still stands along straight, narrow streets. What many Filipinos don't know is that Vigan has an equally significant (but smaller) collection of early 20th-century American-period architecture as well.

There are the usual tourist amenities: restaurants, antique shops and souvenir shops. A calesa ride takes you to the magnificent cathedral, truly worth a visit, and if you are fortunate to find it open, catch the dazzling collection of church treasures at Archbishop's Museum next door.

At the far end of the plaza, behind the gracious Palladian 20th-century Ilocos Sur Provincial Capitol, the Burgos Museum is practically the only opportunity for the visitor to enter a typical Vigan house.

Although every effort has been made to keep its interiors like a turn-of-the-century house, it is still laid out as a museum with excellent exhibits and didactic material. It is more institutional than residential.

While agreeing with scholars who have said Vigan is nothing without its houses, Vigan is more than an urban area with a magnificent collection of 19th-century architecture. Vigan is its people and the life they have always lived in the town and inside the structures that were their homes.

Over the centuries, the historic, cultural and geographic forces that shaped Vigan developed a special lifestyle that is unique in the Ilocos region and in the entire country. That lifestyle should continue into the next century. It provides the human touch that continues the flow of the energy of the ages into the heritage buildings.

Vigan is really more than the shattered homes that visitors pass through as they walk the historic center of the town. Those are only the envelopes that contain Vigan life, and the few houses that today still shelter Vigan life are inaccessible to the ordinary visitor.

The experience of Vigan changes as soon as the visitor enters one of the private homes, sees how the contemporary Viganense live with a mix of heirloom furniture, computer tables with ergonomic chairs, gas stoves, 1999 calendars hung on the walls together with faded sepia portraits of ancestors, all under the light of 80-year-old chandeliers.

Experiencing the heritage of Vigan is experiencing the poetry of Leona Florentino, seeing the magnificent Basi Revolt paintings at the Burgos Museum, seeing the residences and birthplaces of Philippine Presidents (Quirino) and eminent statesmen (Singson-Encarnacion, Mena Crisologo).

Tasting the heritage of Vigan is feasting on longganisa, lomo, pansit musiko, pipian, ipon and the unbeatable freshness of its pakbets and vegetable dishes that go with the cholesterol-deadly bagnet and the ever-present trio of tomatoes, onions and bagoong (kamatis, bagoong, lasuna or KBL). The taste of Vigan is practically unavailable in the town restaurants that prefer to serve generic Filipino food rather than the special Vigan cuisine.

What the survey mission found out was that it is the special Vigan lifestyle that gives substance to the town. It is the culture of Vigan, the energy that connects Vigan to its past and links it to its future.

With equal commitment that the inventory and conservation measures are being done for its historic structures, conservation of the Vigan lifestyle must be done.

Visiting Vigan is indeed taking a step backward. It is visiting our roots. It is indeed where history returns to life, but it is where the texture of Vigan life eludes the tourist.