Hlučín

Hlučín grew near the old boundary between Moravia and the Duchy of Opole. Probably founded by King Ottokar II in the thirteenth century, it is first recorded in 1303 as part of the Duchy of Opava. For many years the town belonged to the Landek estate, before the Piast dukes of Opole acquired it in 1521. Fires struck Hlučín repeatedly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and its inhabitants were freed from serfdom in 1694. The Treaty of Berlin transferred the town to Prussia after the First Silesian War in 1742.