Amid Manila's urban sprawl and exhaust fumes is a sanctuary for the senses of peaceful greenery and lily ponds called Rizal Park. The centrepiece is a towering obelisk guarded around the clock by sentries.
It is a point of pilgrimage for Filipinos because it enshrines the remains of Dr Jose Rizal, who above all other nationalists and revolutionary leaders is revered as the true hero of Philippine independence.
A model replica of the famed patriot, on display in a neighbouring museum, shows a diminutive man, despite his immense personal stature.
Born into a relatively well-off Filipino-Chinese family, he was a brilliant scholar, historian and linguist who qualified as an eye surgeon.
But it was as a novelist and poet that he laid the spiritual foundation for a national uprising which ended three centuries of Spanish colonialism.
While in Europe, Dr Rizal was outraged on hearing news of the brazen execution of three Filipino priests who had agitated the Spanish for greater political control over the nation's destiny.