Manila is a freewheeling, riotous blur of color, sound and odor, a simultaneous party and hangover where anything goes and often does. As a third-world metropolis of 12 million people—the most densely populated city in the world—it’s afflicted with the usual problems of overcrowding and grit. Still, Filipinos are among the happiest, friendliest, most unassailably cheerful people on Earth. In 2007, a global research firm found that Pinoys rate second only to Asian Indians in optimism and happiness. Suggesting again some truth to the old saw westerners love to repeat but never believe: Money really doesn’t equal happiness.

“Manila’s feral,” Carlos Celdran tells me over semi-cold San Miguels. “It’s the wild west.” Carlos is an actor and performance artist who runs an artists’ co-op near Remedios Circle in the hip (think downscale Greenwich Village) area of Malate. He’s outspoken about all things Filipino; while he’s quick to excoriate Manila’s problems, he’s also clearly—and deeply—in love with his city. “There’s a poetry here,” he says. “If you look under the surface, you’re going to find a city rich in history, with museums, shops, cafés. Manila’s always been gritty; the cacophony, the dirt—it’s part of the character. Once you can hear through the cacophony, you’re going to hear the poetry. If you can’t find beauty in Manila, you can’t find it anywhere.”

Carlos invites me to join his popular walking tour through what he calls the soul of Manila, Intramuros (literally “within the walls”). Built at the mouth of the Pasig River in the sixteenth century, Intramuros is the walled city from which Spain exerted control over its farthest-flung colony. We begin at Fort Santiago, the garrison that protected the Spanish colonists from the huddled masses beyond the walls. The Philippines’ Spanish discoverer, Miguel López de Legazpi, apparently put a good deal of thought into choosing the fort’s namesake, Santiago Matamoros (literally, Saint James, Killer of Muslims). Fort Santiago was the stronghold from which the Spanish established dominion over the Muslims who’d been trading (and proselytizing) in the Philippines centuries before the Spanish arrived in 1565. Today, Intramuros is one of only two places left in Manila where one can experience the ambiance of the Spanish colonial period.

Americans might remember Intramuros for the role it played in the Second World War; the Japanese occupied and later mined the area. Douglas MacArthur, returning as promised, opted not to risk ground troops in the booby-trapped maze of the old city. Instead, the Americans bombed Manila more or less indiscriminately; while they succeeded in dislodging the 3,000 or so Japanese soldiers, more than 100,000 Filipinos died in the crossfire. (Grim Filipino humor: MacArthur returned, but we wish he hadn’t). When the dust settled, whatever remained of Intramuros, the buildings the Japanese hadn’t destroyed, was gone. Except for the baroque San Agustin Church, miraculously the only building left standing, everything a visitor sees in Intramuros today is a reconstruction.

It’s a deeply felt narrative in Manila, one of the defining stories of its culture. Before the war, Manila enjoyed a reputation as Southeast Asia’s most modern, cosmopolitan city. But in four short weeks, from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945, it was reduced from the Pearl of the Orient to the second most devastated allied city of the war (Warsaw took first prize). While it has been rebuilt, it has never recovered its prewar character. Today, wandering among the ochre-colored walls and tranquil lily ponds of Fort Santiago, redolent with approximated old-world charm, that history seems a near-distant echo, a voluble ghost.

On the evening of my visit, though, a holier kind of ghost drifted through Intramuros. Once a year, churches from throughout the country transport their hallowed images of the Virgin Mary to Manila and parade them through the streets. This was to be a banner year, with more than seventy figures scheduled to participate. During the day, Intramuros had been abuzz with people dressing the figures in elaborate gold-embroidered robes and festooning their carrozas, or carriages, with lilies and orchids, with candles and electric lights. As night fell, thousands of devotees—beauty queens in gossamer dresses, little girls with angel wings, steely-eyed men in military uniform—followed the Marys to strains of “Ave Maria” and “Silent Night.” It was part procession, part celebration: The entire population of one town accompanied its Mary, singing and dancing behind her carroza. Darkness gathered, and all the long suffering recorded in the streets of Intramuros, all the stains and grit of today’s Manila faded into the blue. The Marys floated past, their angelic faces illuminated by lamps at once electric and divine. Their wooden eyes, cast earthward in compassion or raised heavenward in rapture, delivered a message in symbol. None of that matters, they seemed to say. Trust in God. Bahala na.