Muntinlupa

Muntinlupa, officially the City of Muntinlupa (Lungsod ng Muntinlupa), is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 543,445 people. It is classified as a highly urbanized city. It is bordered on the north by Taguig, to the northwest by Parañaque, by Las Piñas to the west, to the southwest by Dasmariñas, and by San Pedro and Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the country, to the east. It is given the nickname "Emerald City" by the tourism establishment and also known as the "Gateway to Calabarzon" as it is the southernmost city of the National Capital Region. Muntinlupa is known as the location of the national insular penitentiary, the New Bilibid Prison, where the country's most dangerous criminals are incarcerated, as well as the location of Ayala Alabang Village, one of the country's biggest and most expensive residential communities, where many of the wealthy and famous live. There are three plausible origins of the name of the city: First, its association with the thin topsoil in the area, known locally as munting lupa, or "little soil" in Tagalog; Second, residents, purportedly answering a question from Spaniards in the 16th century of what the name of their place was, saying "Monte sa Lupa", apparently mistaking the question for what card game they were playing; and Third, the topographical nature of the area, in which case the Spanish term monte, or "mountain", was expanded to muntinlupa, or "mountain land". The 1987 Philippine Constitution spells the city's name as "Muntinglupa" instead of "Muntinlupa". In 1601, some 88 years after the arrival of Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan in the Visayas islands, the original lands constituting Muntinlupa could be deduced to have been friar lands administered by the Augustinians, then sold and assigned to the Sanctuary of Guadalupe. In 1869, the lands were transferred to the state and large individual landholders.