Fort Santiago stands where the Pasig river meets Manila Bay, on ground already occupied by a fortified settlement before the Spanish arrived. From the late sixteenth century the colonial authorities raised a stone citadel there, the strongpoint of Intramuros, the walled city from which the Philippines were governed for some three hundred years. Its thick ramparts, arched gateway and riverside batteries were designed against both sea attack and internal revolt, while the cells below water level acquired a grim reputation. The fort's most enduring association is with José Rizal, the writer and reformist held here before his execution in 1896, an episode that turned a military installation into a place of national memory. Almost entirely wrecked during the battle for Manila in 1945, the site was later cleared and restored, and now functions as a park and museum. The programme reads the fort as a single continuous document of Spanish colonisation, Filipino nationalism and the violence of the Second World War.
