Toledo - El Cristo de la Luz

In 192 BC, the Romans conquered the area and founded the outpost Toletum. Due to its iron ore deposits, Toledo developed into an important settlement. Since the first barbarian invasions, the ancient walls were reinforced. In 411 the Alans and later the Visigoths conquered the city. Toledo was the capital of the Visigoths' empire from about 531 to 711.

The Moors conquered the place in 712. Toledo experienced its heyday during the period of Moorish rule as Ṭulayṭula during the Caliphate of Córdoba until its conquest by Alfonso VI in 1085, after a four-year siege. In 1088, only a few years after the conquest, Archbishop Bernard of Toledo obtained confirmation from Pope Urban II that Toledo should hold the "primatus in totis Hispaniarum regnis" (primacy in all the kingdoms of the Iberian dominions). The Archbishop of Toledo is still today the Primate of the Catholic Church of Spain.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Toledo school of translators translated ancient philosophical writings (Plato, Aristotle) that had been translated from Greek into Arabic, but also genuinely Arabic writings from the fields of astronomy, mathematics, Islamic religion and theology into Latin.

After the conquest by Alfonso VI, Toledo became the residence of the Kingdom of Castile in 1087 and remained the capital of Spain until 1561.

El Cristo de la Luz was erected in 999 as a mosque. It is in much the same state as it was when it was originally built. The Arabic inscription in Kufic on the building states that Musa Ibn Ali built it.

Legend has it that a shaft of light guided the king to a figurine of the crucified Christ that had been hidden for centuries. The legend says that King Alfonso VI arrived in Toledo after capturing the city in 1085 when his horse fell in front of this chapel.

In 1186, Alfonso VIII gave the building to the Knights of the Order of St John, who established it as the Chapel of the Holy Cross (Ermita de la Santa Cruz). It was at this time that the mosque was renamed and the apse was added.

The small, almost cubic mosque (side lengths and height are each about eight meters) has a square ground plan. About half of the building material used is fired brick and half is roughly hewn quarry stone, which is mostly arranged in horizontal bands, following the Roman model. After the conquest of Toledo in 1085, the mosque building was converted into a church. In the 12th century this was expanded in the Mudejar style, so the former mosque became a kind of narthex.