Among the city's best-known legends are that of the Schierstein Iron Man, a ghost story in which a once stately knight haunts the banks of the Rhine, and that of the Frauenstein blood lime tree, which is said to commemorate a gruesome murder. The legend of Ekko's battle tells that the Wiesbaden springs were created by the giant Ekko stabbing a subterranean dragon with his spear. When he stabbed the ground, hot water shot out and when he slipped in fright, the imprints of his hand and forearm formed the Wiesbaden valleys. The legend of the devil at the Kochbrunnen fountain is about a shrewd innkeeper. The innkeeper made the devil promise never to set his horse's foot in the spa town again if he prematurely stopped a water cure prescribed by the innkeeper with a dose of 50 glasses of Kochbrunnen water a day. Of course, the devil did not manage to keep up the regimen.

The legend of the Grorother Hof is set in Frauenstein: in the Wehrhof, which was first mentioned in a document at the beginning of the 14th century, an old count found his eldest son again after a long and arduous search. The legends surrounding Adolf zu Nassau include the tales of the Nun of Klarenthal and of Faithful Ludwig, who, as bailiff of Sonnenberg, was supposed to protect the king's two children. When enemy troops approached, he found a way to get them out of the castle to safety unnoticed.

The legend of the Klarenthal nun also takes place during a war: while all the other nuns fled from the enemy to Mainz, one nun stayed behind in the convent. When looters broke through the monastery walls and entered the church, she fled to the crypt and turned to the patron saint of the monastery, St. Clare, in her distress. Immediately afterwards, an angelic figure showed her the way through an underground passage directly to Sonnenberg Castle, where the nun was safe until the end of the war.