Associated with the magnificent Baroque Church of St. Nicholas and the long-vanished monastery of Slavic Benedictines is a story of love that knew no boundaries of faith or monastery walls. It is said that a young monk once lived here, whose heart burned with a fierce passion for a beautiful girl from the nearby Jewish Quarter. The lovers met secretly in the silence of a monastery cell, where the girl entered through a forgotten escape tunnel leading deep beneath the foundations of the Old Town.

However, their secret did not remain hidden forever. When the monastery leadership learned of the forbidden love, they decided to hush up the matter to preserve their reputation. The monk was hastily transferred, without a farewell, to a distant, secluded monastery from which there was no return. The unfortunate girl, searching in vain for her beloved’s vanished shadow, went mad from grief and isolation. Her wretched end, however, was not the conclusion of this tragic fate.

Soon after her death, the restless ghost of the mad Jewess began to appear near the church. She wanders the adjacent alleys with disheveled hair, madness burning in her eyes as she still seeks her lost lover. Another, more terrifying version of this legend says that the crazed girl, in her final act of desperation, attacked the monastery abbot who had decided on their separation and strangled him. It is said that since then, they haunt the area together—the shadow of the unfortunate girl and the ghost of the strangled abbot—threatening late-night passers-by, in whom they see their ancient enemies.