While works of literature draw profitably from urban reality as a source of setting, it may be argued recursively that the city-as-lived and built may, in turn, be understood and transformed by literature and the selective perceptions of authors who were once a part of the history of these places. This study analyzes the settings and frames found in Filipino nationalist José Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in order to first uncover and match past scenes, features, and location-names to present-day urban geography. Second, this exposition derives an understanding of the extent of Rizal's Manila and its environmental conditions. Such an analysis could be used to inform technical studies of urban planners and heritage conservationists. Moreover, analyzing the novels by locating and relating important sites and identifying the qualities of their characters during the Spanish colonial period reconstructs a "novel" city and allows it to reemerge from layers of commercial and ahistorical urban sprawl that characterize parts of contemporary Manila. At the same time, the study allows for an appreciation of places that Rizal and his contemporaries grew fond of or associated good memories with, developing what the author refers to as "affections," connoting, in the archaic sense, feelings that could be elicited by, or directed to, a setting. In undertaking this research, the author hopes to bridge the disciplines of urban studies and the humanities. This will lead to a more nuanced on-the-ground development that flourishes because of the actual and the imagined past, rather than allowing unenlightened building practitioners to efface the symbols and edifices that make for a Filipino literary cartography.