The old Seminario-Colegio de San Carlos de Cebu in Martires Street (now M.J. Cuenco Avenue) near Plaza Independencia.

The University of San Carlos traces its humble beginnings to Colegio de San Ildefonso, a school founded by Jesuit missionaries Antonio Sedeño, Pedro Chirino and Antonio Pereira on August 1, 1595.

The University of San Carlos Main Campus in the late 1950s. (Photo from Cebuano Studies Center).

The school closed down in 1769 when the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippines but reopened in 1783, through the initiative of Bishop Mateo Joaquin de Arevalo, as the Seminario-Colegio de San Carlos de Cebu.

The management of the school was handed down to the Dominicans in 1852 and then to the Vincentians in 1867 until the SVD Fathers (Societas Verbi Divini or Society of the Divine Word) finally took over in 1935. Classes were interrupted during World War II but subsequently resumed in 1945. In 1948, it was granted university status.

The old Girls High School Building near the Main Campus, now occupied by Land Bank of the Philippines. (Photo from Cebuano Studies Center)

Through the years the university has produced a number of notable graduates like Sergio Osmeña Sr., the second president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, John L. Gokongwei Jr., an industrialist and tycoon who belongs to one of Asia’s richest, and Christopher Go, a Filipino astronomer who discovered a new red spot on Jupiter.

The university today.