chillin out @ the FORT

no, not in taguig where serendra or bonifacio high street is.. i'm talkin' about the original fort.. the place where Sulayman and his people stood their ground against the spaniard conquerors.. the place that stood as the philippine islands' military, political and religious center for more than 300 years.. the place that was razed to the ground and was painstakingly revived, no longer as a center of power but as a shrine of life, death and memory..

i'm talkin' about fort santiago inside intramuros, manila..

In the beginning, there was the old fort of a muslim settlement headed by Sulayman guarded by wooden palisades, taken over later by the spaniards who built the stone walls of the fort from materials found in what was later to be known as guadalupe in makati.. inside the fort's walls was the history of the philippines was practically planned.. the policies on how people were gonna live their lives, the structures that were to be built, the lives that were to be taken away.. all of these were decided inside fort santiago.. how one cannot feel overwhelmed by this is truly beyond me..

in the end, however, the japanese occupation and the american way of liberation reduced the fort, along with the rest of the walled city, into nothing but piles of rubble, burying with it the power that it had come to know and embrace.. its death would only be temporary, though, as it has been revived to be the grand shrine that it is today..

here are some pictures of plaza militar, which used to be parade grounds for military exercises but has now been converted to a promenade filled with trees, fountains and the nostalgic aura of a glorious past..









the lack of attention such beauty is getting is just unjust, to say the least.. so the next time you're on your way to MOA, why not make a detour towards fort santiago instead?