Mosque of Cristo de la Luz

Tucked away in the heart of Toledo's old town is one of the buildings that reveals most about the city's Andalusi past. Of the ten mosques Toledo once had, the one at Bab al-Mardum is the one that has best withstood the passing centuries, and a visit offers a direct glimpse of Muslim-era religious architecture in a space of almost domestic proportions.

Its own façade tells us when it was built: an inscribed band records that it was raised in the year 999, at the height of the Caliphate of Córdoba's splendour. It was not a great congregational mosque, but a modest oratory linked to one of the gates into the city, Bab al-Mardum, from which it took its name. Here prayed those who had just arrived in Toledo or who were about to set off on their journey, which gives it the air of both a place of passage and a place of quiet contemplation.

After the Christian conquest of the city, Alfonso VI handed the building over to the Knights of the Order of St John, who turned it into a hermitage dedicated to the Holy Cross. In the 12th century new elements were added, above all an apse, and this extension is of exceptional value: it is considered the oldest known example of Mudéjar art. Within a single building, then, the final glow of the caliphate sits alongside the beginnings of a style that would go on to shape much of Spain's monumental landscape.

The name by which it is known today has its own little story, too. When it was consecrated as a hermitage, a crucifix was placed inside, later replaced by an image of the Virgin of the Light, now lost; it is from this devotion that the name Cristo de la Luz derives. Today it is deconsecrated, which means you can explore it at your leisure and observe how two traditions overlap without erasing one another.