Cross Spring (Křížový pramen)
Acidulous water with Glauber’s salt
Marienbad’s most famous spring, where the spa’s history began. Its distinctive bitter taste comes from Glauber’s salt; it is traditionally drunk for digestive and metabolic complaints. The neoclassical pavilion by the colonnade is the ceremonial heart of every drinking cure.
At a glance
Where it rises
By the colonnade
Type
Drinking spring
Classification
sulphate-bicarbonate sodium ferrous acidulous water, cold, hypotonic, very strongly mineralised
Compare the composition of all springsTraditionally used for
Locals had known the spring for ages; written records of drinking cures go back to the early 17th century. It was the Teplá monastery physician Josef Johann Nehr who made it famous in the late 18th century and pushed through the first spa buildings. It is usually drunk in the morning before breakfast, slowly and in small sips — your spa physician sets the exact dose.
A little history
In 1749 the Teplá pharmacist Damián Schulz began evaporating the spring water into a laxative salt, which he sold as “Sal Teplensis”, and had a wooden cross put up by the outlet — the spring takes its name from it. The first proper capture, in an octagonal wooden basin, was made in 1790 by the monastery physician J. J. Nehr. In 1818 a pavilion on Ionic columns rose above the spring; the rebuilding of 1911–1913 captured more than 36 small outlets. Since 1936 the spring has been tapped by boreholes, and the work of 1955–1956 still serves unchanged today.
Source: Mineral springs in Mariánské Lázně for the drinking cure (Bartoš, Nečasová, Knára, 2018).
How the drinking cure works
The water is sipped slowly, usually before meals — traditionally from a spouted spa cup that guides it past the front teeth. Which spring, how much and how often is set by your spa physician, because every water acts differently. This page informs; it is no substitute for medical advice.
