The Mosque of El Cristo de la Luz, Toledo

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The old Bib-al-Mardum Mosque, or Valmardón Mosque, also known as the Mosque or Hermitage of El Cristo de la Luz, is located at the entrance to the city by the Puerta de Bib-Al-Mardon. The mosque was one of the small neighbourhood oratorios that was saved from the demolition carried out by Christians in conquered cities and is conserved almost intact.

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The Mosque of El Cristo de la Luz, Toledo

Contact address for The Mosque of El Cristo de la Luz

C/ Cristo de la Luz, s/n, 45003
Toledo (Toledo)

Phone: 92525a191 - 925254030 (Oficina Turismo)

Fax: 925254191

Email: cristodelaluz@terra.es

Website: www.toledo-turismo.com...

Location

At the entrance to the city by the cuesta del Cristo de la Luz, going through the Puerta de Bib-Al-Mardon.

Type of monument: Religious Architecture

History: The history of this building as a mosque ended in 1186 when it was given by the King to the Knights of the Order of St. John, under the name of Santa Cruz.

This must also be the date of the enlargement of the apse, undertaken by Archbishop Gonzalo Pérez, which was the first antecedent of the Castilian Mudejar style.

Period: 10th century.

Art style: Islamic.

Surroundings: Puerta de Bib-Al-Mardon (The Bib-Al-Mardon Gate), perhaps the oldest in the city.

How to get there: Road transport

An inscription in cubic lettering on the upper part of the principal façade, the date in the year 390 of the Hejira corresponds to 999 in the Christian calendar, when the upper part was rebuilt under the direction of an architect called Musa ibn Alí.

The main façade has three doors, the central one disfigured by an enlargement; another has five lobes and the third is horseshoe-shaped, with the thread of the arc somewhat out of centre with the keystone, a characteristic of Caliphic architecture in its advanced period.

Its exterior is of red brick, decorated with ultra circular interlaced blind arches over which runs a frieze of latticework, over which there is an inscription. Modillion corbels crown it. This type of arcade would be very popular in the region, not only under Moorish domination, but also in the Mudejar area, its use then extending in later centuries to the Reconquest.

Its floor plan is small and square, some eight metres in length and open by three at the sides. Its interior is an open space articulated around its four central columns on which the nine differently structured cupolas are elevated, the central one being the highest.

Their structures are based on Caliphic cupolas that appeared for the first time during the period of Alhaken II with the amplification works on the Cordovan Mosque, having, like them, straight section ridge ribs.