Jesenik

Vincenz Priessnitz was born in 1799 to a farming family at Grafenberg above Jesenik, had no medical education, and from the 1820s developed a system of treatment using cold water - wraps, douches, baths, walking barefoot in dew, drinking spring water and exercise in the open air. He was prosecuted for quackery and acquitted, and the method spread: by the 1840s patients were coming from across Europe and hydrotherapy establishments modelled on his were founded from Britain to America. The spa he built is still working on the ridge above the town, in a park with about eighty springs, monuments raised by grateful patients from different countries, and walking paths threading the woods, all free to enter. The town below has a museum in the water fortress covering Priessnitz and, honestly, the witch trials that also ran in this district in the seventeenth century.

What you actually see

• Where hydrotherapy began - Priessnitz's cold-water method developed here from the 1820s.
• A working spa on the ridge - still treating in the buildings he founded.
• Eighty springs and patient monuments - raised by nationalities across the park.
• A museum in the water fortress - Priessnitz and the district's witch trials.

When to go

May to September. A day.

Honest expectations

Treatments are for booked patients. The spa park is free and involves a climb from the town. Jesenik is remote and rail connections are slow. Weather here is wet and cool.

Nearby

Rejviz bog is south; the Jeseniky and Praded rise beyond it.