Manila

1. 900

   First Written Record

   The Laguna Copperplate Inscription mentions the Manila area by name. A debt release recorded in Old Malay, it reveals a sophisticated network of Southeast Asian trade already thriving along the Pasig River. The smell of mangrove and woodsmoke would have hung over stilt houses that rose and fell with the tides.

2. c. 1500

   Rise of Maynila

   Tagalog rajahs built a fortified trading polity on the south bank of the Pasig. Rajah Matanda and Rajah Sulayman III controlled the river mouth, trading indigo, gold and slaves with Chinese junks and Brunei merchants. Wooden palisades bristled with captured bronze cannon.

3. 1570

   Spanish Arrival and Burning

   Martin de Goiti's men torched the wooden city after a short, sharp battle. The rajahs had scorched their own houses rather than surrender them. Smoke drifted across the river for days. The Spanish smelled opportunity in the ashes.

4. 1571

   Founding of Spanish Manila

   On 24 June Miguel López de Legazpi declared the ruined settlement capital of the Spanish East Indies. Within months Chinese and Mexican silver began flowing through what would become the galleon trade. The grid of Intramuros was staked out according to the Laws of the Indies.

5. 1607

   San Agustin Church Consecrated

   The oldest stone church in the Philippines rose inside the new walls. Massive buttresses of volcanic tuff were built to survive earthquakes that regularly reduced other buildings to rubble. Its cool interior still carries the faint scent of incense and old wax.

6. 1762

   British Capture Manila

   During the Seven Years' War a British fleet seized the city after a two-week siege. They ruled through the Archbishop while Spanish forces regrouped in the provinces. The occupation lasted barely two years yet left lasting bitterness and some very English surnames.

Who lived here

• Pediatrician · 1911–2011

  Fe del Mundo

  Born in Intramuros, worked entire career in Manila

  Born inside the old walled city in 1911, Fe del Mundo watched children die from simple infections and decided to do something about it. She opened the country’s first pediatric hospital in Manila and, during power cuts, invented a bamboo incubator that kept premature babies alive. Walk through Intramuros today and you pass the ghost of the house where a woman who refused to leave patients behind quietly changed medicine.

• Chemist · 1860–1895

  Anacleto del Rosario y Sales

  Born and worked in Manila

  Santa Cruz district raised him, Ateneo and Santo Tomas trained him, and Binondo’s San Fernando Street housed his pharmacy. Anacleto del Rosario figured out how to turn nipa palm wine into pure alcohol good enough to win first prize at the 1889 Paris fair. He then ran the Municipal Laboratory of Manila, testing the city’s water during cholera outbreaks. The man who gave the Philippines its first taste of laboratory science died at 34, but the streets he walked still smell of street food and possibility.

• Architect and heritage conservationist · 1945–2018

  Augusto F. Villalon

  Died in Manila, led preservation efforts there

  For twenty-five years Augusto Villalon fought to stop Manila from demolishing itself. He pushed Intramuros onto UNESCO’s radar, helped write the country’s first heritage law, and stood between wrecking balls and 400-year-old churches. He died in the city he spent his life trying to save. Stand on the battlements of Fort Santiago at dusk and you’re seeing the Manila he won back—one restored balustrade at a time.