Thick stone walls and cobblestone streets inside the old Spanish city, and the courtyard where Ang Larawan restaged the La Naval procession with six hundred extras.
What Intramuros looks like
Thick stone walls enclose the old city on a pentagonal plan, with cobblestone streets running between grey stone buildings behind them. Several of the original gates still stand, stone archways with paired columns and carved pediments set into the wall face. Kalesas, horse drawn carriages with wooden wheels, still work the main streets alongside parked cars and motorcycles.
General Luna Street runs past , a grey stone facade with a single bell tower and a rose window over the door. Cars and tricycles crowd the open courtyard in front of it, and heavy overhead wiring crosses the street on wooden poles. The church's adjoining convent holds a long arched stone cloister, its corridor lined with framed paintings under a dark wood beam ceiling.
Across the street, and the Plaza San Luis complex are a run of stone and wood colonial townhouses built around paved courtyards. Carved stone staircases lead up to shuttered wooden balconies, and stone fountains sit behind iron gates in some of the courtyards.
Toward the bay end of the walls, grass covered ramparts and a brick bastion ruin look out past rows of palm trees. The modern towers of the city rise behind the walls there, visible in any shot that is not kept tight on the stonework.
Shot in Intramuros
For Ang Larawan in 2017, the production restaged the La Naval procession through the Plaza San Luis Complex, with about six hundred extras in period dress. For the Netflix film Kontrabida Academy in 2025, the production shot its academy interiors inside the San Agustin Museum, using the convent's own stone cloister as the school's corridors.
Ang Larawan and Kontrabida Academy
General Luna Street. The 1941 procession used the open plaza outside San Agustin, and the 2025 academy used the convent's own halls behind its walls.
Ang Larawan, 2017
The La Naval procession
About six hundred extras in 1940s dress carried the image of Our Lady of the Rosary through the complex's stone courtyards and arcades. The film is set in October 1941, and the procession recreates the devotion as it was still held inside the walls before the war. Street View
Kontrabida Academy, 2025
The academy interiors
Played the academy's interior halls, a fictional training academy, present day
The academy's dramatic interiors were shot inside the museum's arched stone cloister and its adjoining galleries, the vaulted corridor standing in for the school's own halls. Centuries old religious paintings still hang along the walls where the cameras passed. Street View
What Intramuros can double for
The Walled City in Cartagena, Colombia
The thick stone walls and bastions match Cartagena's own fortress perimeter, built to the same Spanish military engineering standard. The colonial townhouses around Plaza San Luis match Cartagena's balconied streets behind the same kind of wall. Cartagena's buildings run to brighter pastel paint and wrought iron balconies, so a tighter stone focused frame on the walls themselves holds the match better than a wide street shot. Try searching stone fortress walls now.
Old San Juan's own city walls and gates follow the same pentagonal bastion design as Intramuros, both built under the Spanish crown's fortification manual for its American ports. 's stone pediment and paired columns would sit easily among San Juan's own gates. San Juan's walls are a paler cream stone and sit above open ocean on one side, so keeping the water out of frame holds the bastion walls as the match. Try searching bastion fortification walls now.
Old Havana in Havana, Cuba
Old Havana's own colonial plazas and arcaded courtyards share Plaza San Luis's scale, with carved stone stairs behind plain street facades opening onto interior courtyards. Both cities were built under the same Spanish colonial building tradition. Havana's facades run taller with more ornate baroque fronts directly on its plazas, so a tight courtyard frame that excludes the street front keeps the stone match convincing. Try searching colonial plaza stone courtyard now.
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