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.

History

The town's old name, Freiwaldau, came from the German for "free from the woods", and the Czech Frývaldov was a rendering of it. Jeseník is first mentioned in 1267; it was probably founded as the bishops of Wrocław, who had acquired the area in 1199, settled it, and between 1284 and 1295 it became a town, on a trade route from Moravia to Silesia, at a meeting of two rivers and near iron ore. In 1326 thirteen hammer mills were already working here, though iron mining ended at the end of the 14th century, and gold and silver were mined in the second half of the 15th. The Fuggers bought the thriving town in 1506 and revived mining, then sold it back to the bishops in 1547 when the ore ran out, and linen weaving became its main living. The town was damaged in the Thirty Years' War, stood at the centre of the North Moravian witch trials of 1622-1684 and burned in 1696, and after the First Silesian War in 1742 it lost its Silesian markets. Industry revived in the 19th century, with the Regenhart & Raymann textile works founded in 1822 and the railway in 1888, and the hamlet of Gräfenberg, founded in 1808, became the spa of the 1820s and was joined to the town in 1868 (Wikipedia, Jeseník).

What to look for

• 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.

Things to know

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 east; the Jeseniky and Praded rise beyond it.

Key facts