Piešťany superlatives

The Piešťany folk costume, with its advanced embroidery techniques, is one of the most richly adorned of all folk costumes in Slovakia. Since the first half of the 20th century, it has been the Slovak representational costume. Its sleeves were the most decorated part. The dominant colours of Piešťany’s female folk costume were yellow (like sulphur) and orange (flaming), and, to a lesser-degree, red and blue. The Piešťany bobbin lace was incorporated in the middle of the embroidery on the loose, wide sleeves (“taclové” sleeves). A peculiarity of this costume was the skirt, which consisted of two parts, and their width along the bottom reached up to 8 meters.

The most beautiful and the most famous description of Piešťany’s thermal waters, spa and life within them came from Adam Trajan from Benešov, who was a parish priest in nearby Drahovce. This description can be found in his glorifying ode “The Healing Spa Piešťany” which was written in 1642. A sculpture of Adam Trajan is located in the Town Park in Sad A. Kmeťa.

The first written record about Piešťany (under the name Pescan) dates back to 1113. It can be found in the Zobor Scroll hand written by Hungarian King Coloman I. A reference to this first record can be seen on an embossment near the fountain “Story of Springs” at the beginning of the Unruly Line (on the pedestrian zone).

In 1894, the builder of the Piešťany Spa Ľudovít Winter asked Arthur Heyer to depict a symbol of recovery using a single figure. The painter presented his sketch of the Crutch - breaker and ever since, the crutch-breaker has been the unique symbol of the spa and the town. Forty years later, the sculptor Robert Kühmayer created a unique bronze statue of the Crutch-breaker.

The bridge was built between 1931 and 1933 and was designed by architect Emil Belluš. Entrance facades on both sides of the bridge are decorated with Latin inscriptions “Saluberimae Pistinienses Thermae” (The Healing Spa Piešťany) and “Surge et ambula” (Get up and walk). The Colonnade Bridge with a length of 156 meters is the longest covered bridge in Slovakia.

The Piešťany Spa, with its almost two hundred year history, owes its reputation mainly to a unique source of sulphuric thermal mineral water containing 1500 mg of minerals per litre and a temperature of 67 - 69 °C. Water rises from a depth of 2000 meters, bringing with it specific compounds and energy from the earth’s magma. The sediments accumulating at the spring of water in the by-pass branch of the Váh River create the basis of the inimitable, healing, sulphurous mud - peloid, which is considered unique throughout Europe and the world. www.spapiestany.sk

The Victoria Regia flower was named after the English Queen Victoria. In Europe, the flower was first grown in 1849 in the Royal Botanic Gardens in England. Establishing water-lily thermal pools on the Spa Island was the idea of the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand. Since 1935, besides water lilies, there always blooms the Victoria Regia - also known as the Victoria Amazonica, whose home is in the Amazon River basin. This plant has more superlative attributes - the biggest, the most wondrous and the most beautiful.

The first golf course was ceremoniously opened on Pieštany’s Spa Island on July 26, 1914 (two days before the outbreak of World War I). The English magazine Golf Illustrated, in its July 1914 issue, wrote the following about this course: “The most beautiful golf course on the continent has just been opened in Piešťany Spa (Austro - Hungary), only 3 hours away by train from Vienna. It is beautifully situated between the Carpathians and the Váh River, a 5 minute walk from the Thermia Palace Hotel.” Today the 9-hole course is a favourite place to relax for spa guests and visitors of the town. www.spagolf.sk

The Váh River flows through the town of Piešťany. The Sĺňava water reservoir was built between 1956 and 1959 in a place once covered by branches of the river, floodplain forests and alluvial meadows of the Váh River. Since 1980, the section from the Krajinský Bridge (Country Bridge) has been declared a protected area of study with an area of 399 hectares. Its name comes from the high number of sunny days during the year.