Banská Štiavnica - mesto svetového dedičstva

Of Štiavnica´s lizards

A long, long time ago, when everything looked different, but the Štiavnica hills and valleys already had their familiar shape, a shepherd, it is said, was dozing half asleep in the sun next to his sheep on the slopes of today's Old Town Hill 22. Suddenly, something sparkling caught his eye and he just had time to catch sight of two lizards - the back of one glittered with gold, the other with a silver dust. They hid from him under a boulder. The shepherd rolled the boulder aside and to his surprise he found beneath the boulder a nugget of gold...
This fortuitous accident changed the life of the poor shepherd and, as legend would have it, it was also the beginning of the Štiavnica mining industry. And as a consequence, the lizards were included in the older coat of arms of our town, which today is a shield with the town walls and mining tools. And so at the head of the so-called salamander parade, a traditional festival held every year in our town, a shepherd walks with a salamander in his arms... The hill, whose slopes perhaps
shone in the sun where the ore vein reached the surface, was named Glanzenberg - Shining Hill, by the German miners who were settled in this region by the king. It is very likely that the first mining operations did indeed begin here. Evidence for this is provided, not only by today's name for the hill - Old Town, but also by the remnants of mining activity and buildings which archaeologists have uncovered here