In an emotional reunion with her mother, Rosemarie Fritzl, the 42-year-old broke down in tears and said: "I can't believe I'm free – is it really you? I can't believe I'm out. I didn't think I would ever see you again. It's all too much for me. I don't ever want to see him again."
Ms Fritzl was also reunited with the three children that were taken away from her while she was forced to remain in the tiny dungeon with her three other children.
"My babies. You are so beautiful," Elisabeth said as she held them close and stroked their faces.
Elisabeth was drugged and lured into the cellar beneath her family home in Amstetten, Austria, when she was just 18.
Meanwhile her father, Josef Fritzl concocted an elaborate web of lies and convinced his family that she had run away to join a cult.
Her sister Gabriele Helm, 35, also described seeing her sister for the first time in 24 years:
"None of us can believe how normal Elisabeth seems. She is healthy and very chatty and doing very well.
"Every day she gets a bit stronger. I can't say what the family is going through. It's more than anyone can believe. It has devastated us.
"We are working together to support Elisabeth. She is overjoyed to see her children. She told them they were beautiful and she is spending all the time getting to know them."
Her lawyer Christoph Herbst said: "Elisabeth is very happy to be re-discovering the world. She is very keen to go outside and feel the rain on her skin. But it is important for them to adjust slowly.
"For now they just talk to each other. But Elisabeth and her children who lived in the cellar have no concept of time and of the future. Some people who hear the story think Elisabeth is like something from a horror film. But rumours that she has no teeth and cannot talk are not true.
"If you met her you would not realise what she has been through, as she seems just like every normal person.
"She tells her family that all she longs for is a normal life – or as normal a life as they can get. That's her only wish."
Life is also difficult for the three children who were living upstairs because they are now in darkness at the clinic.
Mr Herbst said: "But they are all happy and there is a lot of laughter, which you might not expect. Felix makes everyone laugh. They are teaching him to run because inside the cellar he could not run.
"It is really brilliant how Elisabeth has reacted to the outside world. They are all rather fine. Elisabeth is really an impressive person. She is very strong. She's happy now for the first time."
Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said they were gathering evidence to charge Fritzl with murder – he incinerated a baby who died after being born in the cellar.
