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Philippines is not only Manila
Cebu, the great capital of the south, Cavite, the port of Manila, Vigan, with its typical urban layout, Zamboanga, with its fort, Nueva Segovia, Nueva...

Teaching and health care


For a long time, health care, welfare and teaching tasks were carried out by the religious orders.

Thanks to the zeal and initiative of the Dominicans,...

Markets and factories
Manila was basically a trading city, an international market living in the background of the exchange of products between Asia, America and Europe. The importance of...

Railways, waterways, stone ways
The concern for introducing improvements into urban life concentrates on infrastructures: the provision of a fresh-water supply, and the establishing of...

The river and the sea: bridges, ports and lighthouses
Manila has always looked out over the sea, and this is its raison d'être. Its livelihood depended on the ships that came and went. It is...

Government and administration
Large civil buildings such as the "Palacio de Gobierno", the "Ayuntamiento" and the "Aduana" represented the government institutions of the Spanish...

Bahai-na-cubo, Bahai-na-bato: nipa palm, wood and stone
If one avoids the common tendency to divide the world into West and East as if it were a piece of fruit, then the Philippine house can...

The Cathedral: enduring and standing



http://hispanofilipino.comoj.com/ExpoManila/p17ima1.jpg




Is there any other city in the world whose cathedral has been rebuilt as...

The "City of God": churches, convents and monasteries
In the Philippines, the baroque churches of the Spanish colonial period constitute the most emblematic element of the country's ...

The "Gran Manila"
The forming of the "Gran Manila" is illustrative of the classical Spanish tendency to adapt to its environs, the people and the surrounding culture. Intramuros opened up...

Beyond the walls
Manila begins to grow as a result of trading activities, with an ever-increasing lack of proportion between Intramuros and the villages growing up beyond the walls. At...

Defence and fortification
The Philippines were considered to be a key part of the defence system of the Spanish Crown in the New World. The fortified city of the Philippines was Manila....

Manila "Intramuros"

The walls of Manila determined its growth, marking a dividing line between the outside and the interior. This interior is known as Intramuros.

The relative importance...

A "well ordered" city emerges
Manila forms part of a process of urban development that also takes in the whole of Spanish America and conforms to a single model of city. Maynila, under the...

The Philippines, an Asiatic archipelago
A country set in the heart of Asia, the Philippines formed part of the territories known in the West as the East Indies. The Philippines, situated in...

The Pacific route to the Orient
Transoceanic voyages set off from the eastern coasts of New Spain in an effort to find a new route leading to Asia, as there was a race with the Portuguese to...

The "Cuadrícula"
In the New World, Spain carried out one of the greatest town-planning ventures of all times, and all projects were based on a common model: the "cuadrícula", or grid...

The "Virreinato" of New Spain
The Spanish Crown organized a set of institutions for the administration and government of its territories in the New World. The "virreinatos" of New Spain and...

Defending the sea and the land
The fortifications that were erected by the Spanish Crown in its overseas territories is the largest collection of defence constructions ever to be built by...

Ships, galleons, frigates and corvettes
In those days, shipping vessels were the most complex machines of the time, the galleon being the most oustanding example of available technology....

Sailing on and on
Navigation was based on advances in the science of cartography and their dissemination in printed form. Navigation techniques evolved as a result of the invention of...

The longest transoceanic route
Spain organized the"Indies run" from the port of Seville. This comprised a network of communications that for the first time acquired planetary dimensions; it...

A world linked by the sea
In early times, the sea was more of a barrier than a means of communication: it was an element that separated rather than united peoples. Developments in...

Seville, a Universal City
For centuries, Seville was the city from which voyages departed from the West to the East, across the Atlantic, the Americas and the Pacific routes.

During the...

Orange blossom going, cinnamon returning
Orange blossom set out from Seville, in the form of sweet essence... with a hint of bitterness, and in return, Manila sent cinnamon, in the form of...