Toledo of the three cultures: mosque, synagogue and monastery: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Mosque, synagogue and monastery
In Toledo mosques became chapels and churches, synagogues became churches, and Mudéjar builders worked for Christian and Jewish patrons alike, so three faiths left their mark on the same streets.
The stops
This small brick mosque was built in 999, in the days of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba. A Kufic inscription on its south-west façade, made entirely of brick, names the patron, Ahmad ibn Hadidi, and the builder, Musa ibn Ali. After the Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085 it became a chapel and a Mudéjar apse was added in the 12th century; a legend that only appeared after the conquest says Alfonso VI's horse stumbled in front of it and a shaft of light revealed a hidden crucifix.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 This gate is Mudéjar military architecture that mixes Romanesque and Islamic elements, and its horseshoe and blind multifoil arches are so prominent that it was long taken for a work from before the Christian conquest. The medallion above the arch shows the ordination of Ildephonsus, Toledo's patron saint, receiving his cassock under the sun and moon, and the sun in that scene gave the gate its name.
Photo: Antonio.velez — CC BY-SA 3.0 es Muslim worship went on in this mosque long after Alfonso VI took Toledo in 1085, until the Catholic Monarchs took it out of religious use between 1498 and 1505. It then served as an inn, as premises for small businesses and as a home, and its history was so lost that late 19th-century historians could not say whether it had been a mosque or a synagogue; in 1905 the Royal Academy of History was told it was a mosque. Inside, nine square bays under brick domes, with a ribbed central dome, follow the plan of the Cristo de la Luz mosque, and historians still disagree on when it was built.
Photo: amaianos from Galicia — CC BY 2.0 This 13th-century Mudéjar church stands on an earlier Visigothic structure and probably a Roman building, and its three naves are divided by horseshoe arches on pillars with reused Visigothic and Roman columns. The murals on its walls, covered over in the 16th century and recovered in the 20th, set fully Romanesque figures among Mudéjar decoration that includes Arabic-script inscriptions praising the Virgin Mary. Today it houses the Museum of the Councils and Visigothic Culture, named for the Councils of Toledo, the earliest of which met in 400.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY 3.0 The Royal Monastery of San Clemente is a monastery of Cistercian nuns, and a large one, with two cloisters, a chapter house and a church. It holds a Roman cistern, Mudéjar work and remains of the Palacio de los Cervatos. Tradition, and a historical study, say marzipan in its present form was invented here in the early 13th century, when hunger spread after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 and the nuns had only sugar and almonds; a museum inside is dedicated to marzipan and is said to keep the bowl in which it was first made.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY-SA 4.0 This small church began as a mosque, and traces of an earlier Visigothic church lie beneath it. Sources do not agree on when the mosque was built, with estimates running from the 9th century to 1041 or earlier, and it was enlarged in the 11th century. The site was converted to Christian worship in 1159. The church still faces southeast, toward Mecca, because it was built on the mosque, and it keeps a horseshoe arcade on Visigothic pilasters, one of which carries scenes from the life of Jesus. The tower partly goes back to the minaret, and tradition says Joanna of Castile, known as Joanna the Mad, was baptized here.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY-SA 4.0 Like several Toledo churches, this one began as a mosque: it is recorded in the 12th century on the site of an 11th-century mosque, and mosques were used as churches without major changes because no buildings were destroyed when the city was taken. In the early 14th century, with the church in ruins, the lord of Orgaz rebuilt it and turned the old minaret into a Mudéjar bell tower, with glazed ceramic inlays, blind lobed arches and a Visigothic marble niche set in beside a twinned window. The church is best known for El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, which hangs at the back.
Photo: Jose Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY 3.0 Samuel ha-Levi, treasurer to King Peter of Castile, had this synagogue built as an annex to his palace in the 1350s, in the Mudéjar style, in the old Jewish quarter of a city nicknamed the city of the three cultures. Its brick-and-stone outside is plain, but the prayer hall has Nasrid-style stucco, with Hebrew inscriptions praising the king and Samuel and quoting the Psalms, alongside Arabic inscriptions. After the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 it became a church, which is where the name El Tránsito comes from, and today it is a museum of Sephardic Jewish culture.
Photo: Selbymay — CC BY-SA 3.0 This synagogue was built in the late 12th or early 13th century, and some place it around 1205. Mudéjar builders raised it, yet its five aisles of horseshoe arches on octagonal pillars, with carved pine-cone capitals, are so Almohad in style that it feels closer to a mosque than a synagogue. After the pogroms of 1391 it was sacked and taken by the Church, consecrated as a church in the early 15th century, and named Saint Mary the White after an effigy of Mary kept inside.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Catholic Monarchs built this Franciscan monastery in the Isabelline style between 1477 and 1504, to mark their victory at the Battle of Toro in 1476 and the birth of their son John, and planned it as their own burial place, though after taking Granada in 1492 they chose to be buried there instead. Chains of Christian captives freed from the Moors hang on its granite exterior. In the upper cloister the larch-wood ceiling, painted with the monarchs' coats of arms and their motto Tanto monta, is Mudéjar work.
Photo: Querubin Saldaña Sanchez — CC BY-SA 3.0 Before it was called the Cambrón, this gate was known as the Gate of the Jews and as the Gate of Saint Leocadia. One theory says the name comes from a thorn bush that grew on the ruins of one of its towers before the last rebuilding in 1576, though that is only a guess. The gate you see is Renaissance, in stone and brick, with two pairs of towers, two arches and a figure of Saint Leocadia.
Photo: Daderot — Public domain Archbishop Pedro Tenorio is credited with the late 14th-century work that gave this medieval bridge over the Tagus its great central arch, a 40-metre span that was one of very few that long in the world when it was built. Fortified towers guard both ends, the more recent of them from the 16th century. A legend says the architect found a fatal miscalculation the day before the opening, and that his wife secretly set the bridge on fire in the night to save him from disgrace.
Photo: Ziegler175 — CC BY-SA 3.0
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