The hermitage or church of Cristo de la Luz, formerly the Bab al-Mardum mosque, was built in the year 999 AD. C., as it says in the epigraphic strip of its main façade. It is a building that was first a mosque and later became a Christian temple after the Christian Reconquest.
It owes its name to the fact taken from tradition, according to which, when King Alfonso VI reconquered the city in 1085, his horse bowed as it passed through this mosque, finding a crucifix and a lighted lamp in its inside.
The floor of the prayer room is square, about 9 meters. wide, with four central columns that form nine vaulted compartments.
Its elevation consists of three heights, plus another formed by the central dome. On the lower level are the columns with their reused Visigothic capitals and their horseshoe arches. The second height is formed by a series of trefoil arches. The third height is made up of the caliphal ribbed vaults. Finally, the central dome crowns the entire space of the room, located at a higher level than the rest, thus creating a centralized sensation of the plant.
During the 12th century (1187) the building was reformed, building the presbytery or anteapse -a straight section covered with a reduced brick or groin vault- and the apse covered by a half barrel or quarter sphere vault.
The main façade is oriented to the west, composed in its lower part by verdugadas of brick (horizontal rows of brick that give consistency to the wall made of masonry) and in the upper part entirely of brick. It consists of a body with three access openings, followed by another body with blind interlocking horseshoe arches, a frieze decorated with sebka (framed diamond netting), an epigraphic strip and is finished off with a cornice supported by brick corbels that simulate anal forms.
The northwest façade gives way to the courtyard of the mosque and is also made with brick verduradas in its lower part and brick in the upper part. It has three semicircular arches framed within which open the openings (horseshoe-shaped) at the entrance to the prayer room. The upper level of this entrance is made up of six polylobed arches that frame the same number of Caliphate-style horseshoe arches, decorated with red and white bicolor voussoirs. A fine band of bricks arranged in a corner is arranged below, ending with a cornice similar to the one that appears in the rest of the building. The arrangement of this entrance is a typical simplification taken from the Mosque of Córdoba.
The presbytery and the apse are arranged after the prayer room on its east side. The first is made up of a rectangular section that is wider than the apse to which it is attached. The apse itself has a semicircular plan resting on a curbstone plinth and a double row of superimposed blind arches. Above these appears the double band of bricks in a corner and the same cornice that surrounds the entire complex.
The disposition of the construction elements and the material used, obeys what has been called “Mudejar Toledo style”.
The courtyard accessed through this façade shows a well. Here is a viewpoint that gives access to the Puerta del Sol.
