No building tells the story of Manila more directly than its cathedral. Established in the walled city of Intramuros during the first decades of Spanish rule, the church has been destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly across the centuries by fire, typhoons, earthquakes and, most completely, by the battle that flattened Intramuros in 1945. The structure that stands today was raised in the 1950s to a neo-Romanesque design, its brick and adobe walls, rose window and octagonal dome deliberately evoking the earlier basilicas while meeting modern structural demands. Bronze doors carved with scenes from the city's religious history, stained glass, and one of the largest pipe organs in Asia furnish an interior conceived as an act of national reconstruction as much as of worship. As the metropolitan seat of the Philippine church and a minor basilica, it remains the setting for the country's principal liturgical events. The programme uses this single site to trace four centuries of Catholicism, colonial power and resilience in the archipelago.
