Nowy Sącz

Nowy Sącz lies near the meeting of the Dunajec and Kamienica rivers in southern Poland. Wenceslaus II founded it in 1292 on the site of the village of Kamienica, granting it Magdeburg rights. Its position on the route to Hungary helped it become an important commercial centre. In the fourteenth century Casimir the Great built a royal castle and surrounded the town with walls.

The town prospered in the sixteenth century, but a fire destroyed much of it in 1611. Swedish forces captured and plundered it in 1655, and it became a centre of resistance. Further warfare damaged Nowy Sącz in the eighteenth century; the first partition of Poland placed it under Habsburg rule in 1772.