$9.99City Highlights
Manila Audio Walking Tours
Self-guided, narrated walks through Manila. Buy a tour once, download it, and hear the story at each stop while you walk at your own pace.
Tours from $8.99
Friends walk free. One purchase covers everyone on your walk. Start the tour, invite your friends to join, and it plays on every phone in your group.
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Manila audio tours
Each tour is a mapped route with narration at every stop. Buy it once and it is yours to keep, no subscription.
$9.99City Highlights
$8.99City HighlightsWhat to expect on a Manila audio walking tour
Manila's two audio walks move from the stone bastions of the Spanish walled city to the crowded, incense scented streets of Quiapo and Binondo, tracing how a colonial capital and the oldest Chinatown in the world grew up side by side.
The Intramuros Walk starts at Fort Santiago by the mouth of the Pasig River, where José Rizal spent his last night before his execution, then runs the length of the walled city past Manila Cathedral and San Agustin Church, the oldest stone church in the Philippines, out through the Baluarte de San Diego bastion. From there it crosses Rizal Park to the Rizal Monument and the National Museum buildings on the park's eastern edge. It's about 4 kilometers and 54 minutes, flat the whole way.
The Quiapo to Binondo Walk begins at San Sebastian Church, the only all steel church in Asia, shipped from Belgium in prefabricated parts in the 1880s, then plunges into the crowds around Quiapo Church and its devotion to the Black Nazarene before cutting through old Santa Cruz toward the river.
From there the route follows faded, once fashionable Escolta Street to Binondo Church, in the district often called the oldest Chinatown in the world, finishing among the shops and lanterns of Lucky Chinatown. It's about 3 kilometers and 42 minutes, best walked with room left over for snacks along the way.
Where to walk in Manila
A few of the stops you will pass, and why they are worth slowing down for.
Manila Cathedral
Manila Cathedral's stone facade glows under floodlight against the night sky, statues of saints lining the front above the arched main doors. This is the eighth cathedral to stand on this site since Manila became a diocese in 1579, its predecessors brought down one after another by typhoon, fire, earthquake and finally the battle that destroyed most of the walled city in 1945. The building in front of you was completed in 1958, rebuilt once again from the ruins of war. Plaza de Roma spreads out in front by day, once the ceremonial heart of the Spanish colony, ringed by the governor's palace and the old city hall.
Ongpin Street
A red signboard for the Ongpin Jewelry Center hangs above tangled overhead wires and the stacked floors of Binondo's old shophouses, with dragon ornaments and Chinese signage worked into the streetscape nearby. Ongpin Street is named after Román Ongpin, a Chinese Filipino businessman who backed the revolution against Spain, and it still runs as Chinatown's main commercial spine, lined with jewelers, pharmacies and food stalls selling hopia, steamed buns and fresh lumpia. The crowded wiring overhead is as much a part of the scene as the signage. This is the street to detour down when hunger strikes, since it rewards wandering more than any fixed stop on the route.
Lucky Chinatown
A golden dragon curls around a lamppost in front of the Chinatown Lai Lai Hotel, its red signage and paper lanterns announcing one of Binondo's busiest corners. This modern stretch of Chinatown sits a world away from the steel Gothic of San Sebastian Church where this walk begins, but it's exactly the kind of lively, commercial energy that makes Binondo worth finishing on. Visitors pause here to photograph the dragon, a popular stop even though it's not a historic landmark. Binondo is at its most exuberant during Chinese New Year, when lion and dragon dances fill these same streets and firecrackers crackle long into the night.
Quiapo Church and the Black Nazarene
A dense crowd packs tightly around a dark wooden image lifted above their heads, hands reaching up from every direction to touch it. This is devotion to the Black Nazarene, a life size statue of Christ bowed under the weight of the cross, carved in Mexico and brought to Manila by galleon in 1606. Fridays are its day, with Masses running one after another at Quiapo Church, and on January 9 the Traslación procession carries the statue from Rizal Park back to the church in a crowd that can take most of a day to pass. Devotees, many of them men, credit the image with healings and answered prayers.
Binondo's Chinatown Gate
An ornately painted arch spans the road into Binondo, its red and gold panels carrying the Chinese characters for Chinatown above a steady stream of jeepneys, motorbikes and pedestrians. Chinese traders settled in this district from 1594, after the Spanish granted land here to Chinese converts to Catholicism and their families, which is why Binondo is so often called the oldest Chinatown in the world. The gate marks the shift from the faded grandeur of nearby Escolta Street into the dense, busy blocks of shops, restaurants and gold dealers that still define the neighborhood. Traffic rarely lets up here, so crossing takes patience and a careful eye on the lights.
Get the Audio Tour in 3 Simple Steps
All in the free Walk With Me app, and the first stops of every tour are free to try.
Tap the Gold Headphones and Pick a Tour
01
Walk It Solo or Invite Someone
02
Press Play and Walk
03
Handcrafted for Your Time in the City
These tours aren't a checklist of sights. They're made to be walked slowly, headphones on, eyes on the city.
Meditative and Immersive
Each story is told where it happened. The app chimes when you reach a stop, one tap starts the story, and the stretch between stops is yours to take in at your own pace.
Handcrafted With Care
We choose every route and every stop ourselves and shape each story with care, so the time you have in the city goes to the places most worth seeing.
Better With Someone
Every walk is better with someone beside you, so if you can bring a friend, we really hope you do. That's why one purchase covers everyone you invite: they join your tour free.