Churches, gardens, dungeons – a cycling tour of Intramuros, Manila, is a ride through Philippine history

Manila’s growing army of cyclists can now use their bikes to explore historic Intramuros, where a network of bicycle lanes is a hit with fans of pedal power

Bambike runs guided tours of the ‘Walled City’, Manila’s oldest neighbourhood; riders zip down cobbled streets to leafy plazas and past churches and dungeons

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A guided cycling tour through Intramuros, the oldest part of Manila in the Philippines, takes in courtyards, gardens and a site closely connected to the darkest period in the former Spanish city’s recent history. Photo: Tamara Hinson

Tamara Hinson

Published: 12:55pm, 1 Apr 2024Updated: 2:46pm, 1 Apr 2024

Manila does not look like a city designed for cyclists.

It can take hours to get from one side of the Philippine capital, a conurbation known as Metro Manila, to the other, and on its busier roads, smoke-belching jeepneys – gaily painted public buses originally cobbled together from military vehicles abandoned by American soldiers after World War II – weave chaotically between trucks, buses and horse-drawn carts.

But in Pasay, on the city’s seafront, rows of bicycle stands can be found outside the enormous SM Mall Of Asia.

BGC (Bonifacio Global City), a central business district that has some of the city’s swankiest hotels, has fewer bicycle lanes than Pasay but no shortage of cyclists. At One Bonifacio High Street, a leafy pedestrianised plaza filled with colourful art installations, there are rows of guitar-shaped stands next to a machine that allows cyclists to secure their bikes for a few pesos.

Bambike offers guided cycling tours of Intramuros. Photo: Tamara Hinson

Surprisingly, however, it is the city’s oldest neighbourhoods that have embraced cyclists with the most enthusiasm.

In Binondo, Lycra-clad cyclists now dodge the wooden handcarts being pulled through the streets of the world’s oldest Chinatown, although the most significant development is the network of bike lanes that were recently laid out in nearby Intramuros (Spanish for “inside the walls”), the city’s oldest neighbourhood.