Iloilo City, officially the City of Iloilo (Hiligaynon: Siyudad/Dakbanwa sang Iloilo; Tagalog: Lungsod ng Iloilo) is a highly urbanized city in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. It is the capital of the province of Iloilo, where it is geographically situated and grouped under the Philippine Statistics Authority, but remains politically independent in terms of government and administration. In addition, it is the center of the Iloilo-Guimaras Metropolitan Area, as well as the regional center and primate city of the Western Visayas region. In the 2020 census, Iloilo City had a population of 457,626 inhabitants, with a 0.2% population annual rate. For the metropolitan area, the total population is 1,109,649 inhabitants.
Iloilo City is a conglomeration of former towns, which are now the geo-political districts consisting of: Villa de Arevalo, Iloilo City Proper, Jaro (an independent city before), La Paz, Mandurriao, and Molo. The district of Lapuz, a former part of La Paz, was declared a seperate district in 2008.
Founded in 1566, when the Spaniards established a settlement area between the towns of Oton and the city's present district of Villa de Arevalo, it was the second Spanish colonial center after Cebu in the Philippine Islands. Iloilo was one of the Royal Spanish Cities in the Philippines in the Spanish Asia, along with Manila and Naga. The honorific royal title, La Muy Leal y Noble Ciudad ("The Most Loyal and Noble City"), was given by the Queen Regent of Spain, Maria Christina, to Iloilo. This is an inscription in the Coat of Arms from the Royal Decree of 1896, for the city's loyalty to the Spanish Crwon during the Philippine Revolution. It is the second city in the country to have such a byname, after the City of Manila in the Spanish colonial era Philippines. Iloilo was also more popularly known as "La Reina Cuidad del Sur" ("The Queen City of the South"), being second only to the most important and primate city in the Philippines, Manila, at the turn of the 20th Century in terms of economy, with foreign and local commercial establishments lining the whole strecth of Calle Real (Iloilo's Escolta and old business district), an agricultural experimental station established at La Paz in 1888, a school of arts and trades which opened in 1891, and a telephone network system operating in the metropolis in 1894.
Iloilo was the last capital of the Spanish Empire in Asia and the Pacific before the Philippines was ceded to the United States in 1898 through the Treaty of Paris. The Federal State of the Visayas, a short-lived revolutionary state composed of the Provincial Government of the District of Visayas (Panay), the Cantonal Government of Bohol, the Cantonal Govenment of Negros, and the Island of Cebu, was lated established, and the City of Iloilo became its capital.