Muse

Because of WWII, very few Art Deco buildings remain in the City of Manila and most of the other cities of Metro Manila are too young to have had any. One of those still standing is the old Capitol Theater in Escolta Street. During the Spanish and American colonial eras, Escolta was the commercial district of Manila. The Capitol was one of the country's first cinemas, and one of the few air-conditioned ones too, and was designed in the 1930s by Philippine National Artist for Architecture Juan F. Nakpil. By all accounts, the interior of the cinema was one of the grandest at the time too, with murals by other National Artists. It is now an abandoned, empty shell and only a hint of its former beauty remains in its facade which features a beautifully patterned window grill flanked by reliefs of the Muses of Film and Music.