For a country that lists rice as its primary crop and staple food, any place referred to as a "rice bowl" is bound to be fertile ground. Fortunately Ilocos Norte, though often characterized as dry and generally challenging for agriculture, also has a rice bowl in the municipality of Dingras .

Dingras is about 20 kilometers southeast of Laoag City and is situated at the entrance of the Dingras Valley that includes the towns of Banna, Nueva Era, Piddig and Solsona. Its geography is distinctive, being a 96-kilometer floodplain irrigated by the Padsan river and its latticework of estuarine tributaries, almost completely encircled by mountains to the south, east and north.

An exploration of the built heritage of Dingras starts in the town center, with its magnificent church ruins and the adjacent convento and atrio . The Dingras church's façade recalls the lines of the 1760 Manila Cathedral which design, in turn, can be traced to the church of Il Gesú in Rome . The old convento , now a school, forms an "L" with the church façade -- an unusual configuration but reminiscent of the arrangement at Laoag City .