The legend of the Cieplice springs – how a deer revealed the hot water

It is said to have happened around the year 1175, when these mountains were still wild and almost uninhabited. Duke Bolesław the Tall set out to hunt and – as so often in Karkonosze tales – it all began once again with a deer.

The duke tracked the animal and chased it through the dense forest. Swift and elusive, the deer drew him ever deeper into the valley, until it suddenly vanished into clouds of white steam rising among the trees. Bolesław reined in his horse, astonished: from the ground, amid the cold mountain forest, water was welling up – warm, almost hot, steaming in the morning air.

There, where the deer had stopped, a spring flowed from the stones warmer than many a bath. The duke dismounted, touched the water with his hand and could not believe it: in the heart of cold mountains, nature had hidden warmth. He understood he had found a treasure more precious than any quarry.

Word of the wondrous warm waters soon spread. The sick and the weary began to come to the springs, for the water brought relief. In time monks settled here, a spa grew up, and the place was named after its nature – in Latin „Clarus Fons", the Clear Spring, later Cieplice.

And once again it was the deer – as with the name of the city itself – that proved the guide, leading a man to what was most precious of all.