Strzelce Opolskie

Strzelce grew from a market settlement on the road between Opole and Kraków. Its castle, first mentioned in 1303, guarded the southern side of the town, with marshes beyond it. In the fourteenth century the castle became the residence of Duke Albert, who ruled a separate Silesian principality here. After the death of the last Piast duke of Opole in 1532, the castle passed to the Habsburg king Ferdinand. Later in the century Georg von Redern began a lengthy rebuilding of the old fortress as a Renaissance residence; his family acquired Strzelce outright in 1615.