Intramuros, Manila, Philippines
San Agustin Church
The oldest stone church in the Philippines, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built by Augustinian friars in 1607, surviving wars, earthquakes, and the Battle of Manila.
This church should not still be standing. Earthquakes in 1645, 1852, 1863, and 1880 leveled nearly every other colonial church in Manila. The British shelled it in 1762. The Japanese occupied it during World War II, and the Battle of Manila in 1945 destroyed the surrounding Intramuros district almost completely. San Agustin survived all of it. The Augustinian friars built it between 1587 and 1607 with walls thick enough to double as a fortress and buttresses that could absorb seismic shock. The result is heavy and solid — a Baroque facade of volcanic stone, a single wide nave, and a barrel-vaulted ceiling painted in the nineteenth century with trompe-l'oeil architectural designs by two Italian artists. The paintings create the illusion of a coffered ceiling with receding arches, and they are surprisingly convincing from the nave floor. The choir loft has elaborately carved hardwood stalls made from Philippine molave wood. Fourteen side chapels hold colonial-era santos and retablos. The attached monastery, now a museum, contains religious art, vestments, and artifacts from four centuries of Augustinian presence in the Philippines. The cloister garden is one of the few green spaces left in the dense urban landscape of Intramuros.
Diocese: Archdiocese of Manila
Style: Spanish Colonial Baroque
What to See
Look up first. The ceiling paintings cover the entire barrel vault and create a convincing illusion of three-dimensional architecture — columns, arches, and balustrades painted on a flat surface. The effect is best from the center of the nave. The choir loft at the rear has carved molave stalls with misericords and armrests shaped into animal and floral forms. The side chapels contain retablos — carved and gilded altarpieces — from different centuries. The monastery museum in the attached cloister is excellent, with a collection of colonial religious art, Chinese trade ceramics, liturgical silver, and vestments. The cloister garden itself, with its fountain and tropical plantings, is a calm retreat from Manila's intensity. The church's exterior buttresses are massive and worth walking around to appreciate the engineering that has kept this building upright for over four hundred years.
Pilgrim Notes
San Agustin is inside Intramuros, the old walled city of Manila. It is open daily, with a small admission fee for the museum. Mass is celebrated regularly and the church is a popular venue for weddings. Intramuros is walkable and has been partially restored — Fort Santiago, Manila Cathedral (rebuilt after the war), and Casa Manila are all nearby. The heat in Manila is intense, so visit in the morning. The church is air-conditioned and provides relief. San Agustin is one of four Baroque Churches of the Philippines inscribed together as a UNESCO site — the others are in Paoay, Santa Maria, and Miag-ao, all worth visiting if you are traveling in the provinces.