Rychbach

Rychbach, known in German as Reichenbach, stands on the Piława at the foot of the Owl Mountains. First recorded in 1258, the town belonged to several Piast-ruled duchies before passing to the Bohemian Crown in 1392. Its arms showed St George slaying the dragon, and the Knights Hospitaller established a school and hospital here in 1338.

In the sixteenth century Rychbach became a centre of the linen and textile trade. Epidemic and the Thirty Years' War brought hardship, including plunder by Swedish and Imperial troops in 1633 and 1634. An earlier epidemic in 1606 had already killed some two thousand people. The town became Prussian after the First Silesian War. In 1790 representatives of Austria, Prussia, Britain, Poland and the Dutch Republic met here to discuss the wars involving the Ottoman Empire.