Metro Manila
— — the bay's long sunset, held above thirteen million people.
Not only on a wall.
“Sixteen cities and a town wrapped around Manila Bay and the lower Pasig River. Intramuros still holds its Spanish walls inside Manila proper, with Makati and Bonifacio Global City rising glass-tall just east. Roxas Boulevard runs the bay for kilometres and empties slowly into the famous orange-pink hour. The traffic is its own weather; the sunset is the city's daily appointment with itself.
Metro Manila, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Metropolitan Manila, the National Capital Region of the Philippines, is a federation of sixteen cities and one municipality on the eastern shore of Manila Bay, where the Pasig River reaches the sea. The region covers roughly 620 square kilometres and holds about 13.5 million people, with the wider urban area passing 25 million. The city of Manila is the historic core and the seat of national government, while Quezon City is the largest by population and Makati and Taguig hold the central business districts.
Intramuros, the walled city built by the Spanish beginning in 1571, still holds the historic heart of Manila proper. Its 4.5-kilometre defensive walls enclose San Agustin Church, completed in 1607 and the oldest stone church in the Philippines, and the reconstructed Fort Santiago at the mouth of the Pasig. Outside the walls, Rizal Park anchors the bayfront where Roxas Boulevard begins its long run south. The high-rise skylines of Makati's central business district and Bonifacio Global City rise about ten kilometres east of the old city.
Manila Bay sunsets are a civic ritual. The bay opens west onto the South China Sea, and the low horizon makes for unusually long, saturated orange-and-pink dusks visible the length of Roxas Boulevard from Rizal Park down through Pasay. Sunset times sit close to 5:30 p.m. in December and around 6:30 p.m. in June. Tropical haze and the bay's particulate load deepen the colour. The boulevard fills with walkers in the last twenty minutes before the sun reaches the water.