The witches’ fountain
The wind bit my ears as I studied the stone; a small, sharp-angled piece of pebble jammed firmly into the fountain’s spout.The trough below the spout, into which water originally flowed, now held a tub of chilly-looking pot plants. Crowds, focused on the dominating fortress ahead of them, surged past me. A backward glance to their right, if they had paused in their rush to the castle, would have revealed a wall-mounted, metal monument to a gruesome past. Known as the witches’ fountain, or witches’ well, this is a memorial to numerous individuals (mostly women) killed in the 16th and 17th centuries on accusations of witchcraft.
