Buchach

Buchach stands on the Strypa, a tributary of the Dniester, beneath a castle overlooking the town. In the late fourteenth century the nobleman Michał Awdaniec founded a parish church and built the castle; his descendants took the name Buczacki from their residence. The town grew as a market linking the Polish lands with routes towards the Ottoman Empire.

Tatar attacks repeatedly damaged Buchach, whose municipal rights were renewed in 1515. In 1672 Ottoman forces took its castle, and Sultan Mehmed IV stayed in the town. The Treaty of Buchach, signed here that year, ceded Podolia to the Ottomans. Under the Potocki family, the town acquired notable Baroque buildings. Mikołaj Bazyli Potocki sponsored a richly decorated town hall around 1751 and a Catholic church in the 1760s, and rebuilt the damaged castle. Buchach passed to the Habsburg monarchy in the first partition of Poland in 1772.