Torzym

Torzym, historically Sternberg, grew beside a castle at a junction of roads through the Lubusz country east of the Oder. The castle is recorded in 1313, and in 1375 the place was described as a fortified settlement and small town. Its lands lay within the sphere of Magdeburg and later Brandenburg; noble landlords retained rights over the settlement and its markets. Although called a town in medieval records, it received formal town rights in 1762. The surrounding Sternberg district remained a rural landscape of villages, woods and estates.