Fuerza de Santiago
Fuerza de Santiago (Spanish) or Fort Santiago (English) is a fortress that was built for the Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi . The fortress is part of the Intramuros neighborhood in Manila in the Philippines .
The Santiago Fortress was built on the ruins of the palace of the former chief of Manila, Rajah Sulayman . The palace was destroyed by the Conquistadors in 1570 after numerous bloody battles between the Muslim residents of Manila and the Spaniards. After the Spanish victory, the fortress was built in 1571.
Originally the fortress consisted of an earth wall . Most of it was destroyed and besieged by the Chinese pirates under Limahong in the Spanish-Chinese War (1574-1575) . The Spaniards fought another bloody conflict and defeated the Chinese. The fortress was finally rebuilt in 1589, but this time out of stone. Construction work ended in 1592.
Santiago quickly became the main hub of the spice trade between Europe and the Americas for the next 333 years. The famous Manila galleons regularly shuttled between Acapulco , Mexico and Santiago.
The fortress has walls with a height of 22 meters and a thickness of eight meters. The entrance is 12 meters high. The fortress is located on the Pasig River and was the main defense structure of the Spanish government in the Philippines.
During the British invasion of the Philippines in 1762 , fierce fighting broke out around the Fuerza de Santiago, in the Battle of Manila. The fortress was badly damaged in the bombardment, but could be repaired after the end of the British occupation in 1764.
The fortress was besieged by the Japanese during the Second World War and largely destroyed during the Battle of Manila in February 1945. It was later rebuilt under the administration of Intramuros in the 1980s.
Today the fortress serves as a museum with carefully restored Spanish government houses. Here is also the so-called Plaza de Armas , in which the shrine of the Filipino national hero José Rizal is located and the dungeon in which Rizal was held by the Spanish authorities.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The british Interlude ( Memento of the original from September 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 14 ° 35 ′ 26.7 ″ N , 120 ° 58 ′ 30.4 ″ E