Taal, Batangas

Taal is a municipality in the province of Batangas, Philippines, with a population of 61,559 at the 2024 census. The town was founded by Augustinian friars in 1572. It is famous for its old ancestral houses, among them the house in which Marcela Coronel Mariño de Agoncillo grew up, built in the 1770s by her grandparents and now a museum. The poblacion, or town proper, is designated a National Historical Landmark, and the town holds hundreds of heritage structures from the Spanish colonial period, so scholars have pushed for its inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Taal is also known as the balisong and barong tagalog capital of the Philippines. The municipality is drained by the Pansipit River down into Balayan Bay, and after the 1754 eruption of Taal Volcano the north shore of Taal Lake, which had belonged to Tanauan, was annexed to Taal.