The Rizal Shrine museum displays memorabilia of the hero in their collection and the fort features, embedded onto the ground in bronze, his footsteps representing his final walk from his cell to the location of the actual execution.

[2][3] It is located at the mouth of the Pasig River and served as the premier defense fortress of the Spanish Government during their rule of the country.

The latter is united with a tower of the same height as the walls, through which there is a descent to the water battery placed upon a semicircular platform, thus completing the triangular form of the fort.

The construction of Fort Santiago with hard stone, together with the original fortified walls of Intramuros, commenced in 1590 and finished in 1593 during the term of Governor-General Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas.

[7] The fort as Dasmariñas left it consisted of a castellated structure without towers, trapezoidal in trace, its straight gray front projecting into the river mouth.

Arches supported an open gun platform above, named the battery of Santa Barbara, the patron saint of all good artillerymen.

Curtain walls of simplest character, without counter forts or interior buttresses, extended the flanks to a fourth front facing the city.

[10] During the leadership of Fernándo Valdés y Tamon in the 1730s, a large semicircular gun platform to the front called media naranja (half orange) and another of lesser dimensions to the river flank were added to the Bastion of Santa Barbara.

[8] On September 24, 1762, British forces led by Brigadier-General William Draper and Rear-Admiral Samuel Cornish invaded and captured Manila, and along with it Fort Santiago.

[12] The fort sustained heavy damage from American and Filipino military mortar shells during the Battle of Manila in February 1945.

Also, approximately 600 American prisoners of war died of suffocation or hunger after being held in extremely tight quarters in the dungeons at Fort Santiago.

Today, the fort, its bastions, and the prison dungeons for criminals used by the Spanish officials, is now part of a historical park which also includes Plaza Moriones and several ruins.