By Alastair Mcindoe, Philippines correspondent in Manila

Near Manila's gridlocked bayfront road is the old Spanish walled city of Intramuros, a national treasure that has survived devastating earthquakes, near annihilation in World War II and modern-day city planners.

Intramuros (it means within the walls) is a tranquil haven of museums, cobbled streets, restored colonial-era buildings and tropical gardens. And, since my first visit over a decade ago, more galleries, craft shops and restaurants have opened.

Intramuros was built on a Malay kota or fort ruled by a Bornean prince named Rajah Solaiman. Spanish conquistadors took over in 1571 and built a fortress city of churches, administrative offices and residences covering 7.8 sq km.

With the exception of a brief occupation by a British naval squadron in 1762, Intramuros kept out foreign invaders and marauding pirates until America elbowed Spain out of the Philippines in 1898.

Start your visit at Fort Santiago at the north end of Intramuros. Like much of the walled city, the fortress, which overlooks the Pasig River's murky waters at the mouth of Manila Bay, is an atmospheric mix of the ruined, restored and miraculously preserved.

Country's national hero Jose Rizal is chronicled at Fort Santiago at Intramuros

The extraordinary life of the country's national hero Jose Rizal is chronicled here. Independence campaigner, educator, ophthalmologist, botanist and linguist, Rizal wrote two novels, known by Filipinos simply as Noli and Fili, that explosively illuminated Spain's oppressive rule.

After a farce of a trial for rebellion, he was briefly imprisoned in Fort Santiago and executed in the nearby Bagumbayan Field on Dec 30, 1896.

His final steps to a firing squad are laid out in bronze footsteps. Take a moment to read the moving poem he wrote, or at least completed, in his cell on the night before his execution. Written in Spanish, Mi Ultimo Adios (My Final Farewell) is inscribed in various languages on the museum's walls.

Silahis in General Luna Street is still the best arts and crafts shop in Intramuros. Agreeably free of touristy kitsch, this three-floored emporium is crammed with native products from across the archipelago. Recommended buys include dinner mats, prints of old Manila and wood carvings.

There are also galleries and shops in the shady interior courtyards of the Plaza San Luis Complex on General Luna across the road from the San Augustin Church.

Intramuros has yet to make a mark on Manila's increasingly vibrant restaurant scene. But Barabaras in the Plaza San Luis Complex is worth a visit just for the over-the-top 19th-century decor. It serves a reasonable lunch buffet of European and Filipino dishes for 395 pesos (S$12).

The cooler late afternoons are the best time to visit and the American-era Manila Hotel, a short walk from Fort Santiago, is perfect for a sundowner afterwards.

Restoring Intramuros to its pre-war grandeur was begun in 1979 by Imelda Marcos, the wife of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It is still a work in progress.

Most of the buildings inside the walled city and a large swathe of Manila north of the Pasig River were destroyed in World War II's closing months.

The historic San Augustin Church was one of Intramuros' few buildings to survive the inferno with its roof intact. This great survivor also stood firm in the great earthquake of 1863.

Native products can be found in the craft shops in Intramuros

For nearly 30 years after the war, much of Intramuros was a slum area.

The head of the Intramuros Administration, which is charged with the quarter's restoration, is former teacher, antique dealer and newspaper columnist Anna Maria 'Bambi' Harper.

We sat down in the Museum Shop in Fort Santiago at a table laid with an elegant tea service that was on sale. Coffee was brought in from a nearby Starbucks.

'Intramuros is the only heritage site in the city where you can experience old Manila, but it needs to become more of a mixed-use area,' she says. 'We want to attract residential development so more cafes, shops and restaurants will open here; nowadays this place is rather dead at night.'

Indeed, a Belgian visitor in 1870 likened Intramuros to 'one huge convent' with no hotels, cafes or clubs for the Europeans living there. The place livened up in the American period, though it still remained Manila's most important venue for religious festivals until the war.

The redoubtable Mrs Harper has several projects lined up for Intramuros. Trams are set to clang through its streets for the first time since the 1940s in the coming months. On the restoration front, work is underway to rebuild St Ignacio Church, just a shell right now, using plans from local and Spanish archives.

Restoring Intramuros to a heritage site matching, say, colonial Macau would be a powerful tourist attraction. As things stand, many visitors skip Manila and head straight for the beaches.

Some argue that Intramuros is more about the history of Spain and the other colonial powers that occupied the Philippines.

True, the locals were not allowed to live inside the walled city until the early 19th century, while Chinese settlers were made to live in a quarter well within the range of Fort Santiago's canons.

As Filipinos say dryly of Spanish and American rule: 'Three hundred years in the convent, half a century in Disneyland.'

Mrs Harper waves aside the notion of Intramuros being foreign ground. 'Its history', she says, 'reflects the melting pot' of influences in the Philippines.

The crouching Chinese granite lions flanking a statue of St Augustin on the outer walls of the famous church that bears his name make the point nicely.

amcindoe@yahoo.com

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Nov 18, 2008.

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