The restaurant's atmosphere is cool - in every sense. The blazing midday sun can't touch the patrons as they tuck into daeng bonoan - piquantly seasoned bangus fish on rice. They're deep within the recesses of the great Intramuros Wall, a 400-year-old legacy of the Spanish occupation of the Philippines.
Le Dans is not the only eatery embedded in the wall, located in the southeast of modern Manila. There are a dozen at least, along with fancy hi-tech offices, souvenir shops and a disco, many fitted into the chambers used by the Spanish to store munitions and house prisoners and gatekeepers.
Much of Intramuros, the seat of Spanish rule and Manila's oldest district, with its baroque churches - including the country's oldest, San Agustin - palaces and mansions, was ruined in the Pacific war. Restoration is almost complete, save for the northwest sector, which has been lost to development.
The best way to experience the area is by taking a walk around the wall - about 4km in all.
A major road, General Luna, dissects the Manila Municipal Golf Course at the southern gate. The lush greens of the course were once a wide moat, its waters drawn from the Pasig River, on whose southern bank the walled city was built. Trading vessels deposited their goods at what was then the main southern gate: Puerta Real, 'The Royal Gate', which has fallen into disuse and been replaced by an entrance further to the east.
Even at its thinnest, the Intramuros Wall is a good 3 metres thick; in more strategic spots you can multiply that by six. At the southeast corner a rampart takes you to the Baluarte de San Andres, one of eight major bastions, or raised fortifications that once bore cannon. Some remarkable discoveries have been made beneath these fortresses. Archaeological digs in the San Andres district have uncovered the foundations of much earlier fortifications while similar excavations at Baluarte de San Diego have revealed three-tiered circular stone walls dating back to 1586.
