Casa Manila Museum is located in Intramuros, Manila, Philippines.
The museum recreates the lifestyle during the colonial period through antique furniture, paintings, lighting fixtures and other objects of decorative art.
From the moment you enter the wide piedra china-paved zaguan (corridor) where guests used to get off from their carriages, to the courtyard, all the way to the interior; bits and pieces of our many foreign influences are evident.
The vases are Ming, the wooden furniture is Victorian. Walls are Baroque. The high ceilings and wide narra planks for flooring are Castillan. And the capiz windows and louvers were adapted by the Spaniards to provide better ventilation in our tropical climate.
Even before
World War II, most of the houses and some churches in Intramuros were already damaged by major earthquakes in 1863 and 1880.
Casa Manila, a "colonial lifestyle" museum, is only a section of Plaza San Luis Complex, a commercial-cultural complex. As with all new structures built within the walls of Intramuros, facades here are based on colonial period designs.
The facade of Casa Manila was copied from a house (c.1850) at Calle Jaboneros in San Nicolas, a district across the
Pasig River. In that area, the first floor of houses were rented out to shopkeepers. In Casa Manila, you will find shops in the ground floor where you may buy antiques, art objects and souvenir items.
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