In 1999, Vigan, a city in northern Philippines, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, being considered the best-preserved example of a European colonial town in Asia. Recent decades have been marked by efforts to conserve the city’s built and intangible heritage. This has resulted in the image of a city which emphasizes its history and tradition, aspects often construed as being in opposition to modernity. Following Gaonkar’s assertion of modernity unfolding within local contexts to encompass site-specific creative adaptations, we use participant interviews to form a localized image of modernity which shows residents are adapting and responding to demands of progress through heritage conservation and tourism, intertwining these phenomena with notions of “the modern” among Vigan’s population. Furthermore, taking cues from Robinson’s definition of modernity as contemporaneity, change, and dynamism, we interrogate the locals’ histories of change in recent years in Vigan as “histories of modernity”. These include economic development tied to tourism, awareness of the city’s value, shifting traditions and recreation of histories, reconfiguration of public spaces, increasing interconnections, and discontents within the city. Our study shows that in the context of all these aspects the city presents itself as a site for the modern condition, a site for change and dynamism, development, and contestation, and for local adaptations to global processes.