Zywiec

Żywiec stands on the Soła in a basin surrounded by the Beskid Mountains. First recorded as a parish in 1308, it became a centre of settlement in the sparsely inhabited highlands. Flooding at the old site led the town to move in 1448, and in 1457 the Duchy of Oświęcim, to which it belonged, was purchased for the Polish Crown.

The Komorowski family held Żywiec until selling it in 1624 to Queen Constance, wife of Sigismund III. Swedish troops plundered the town in 1656, and it later passed to Chancellor Jan Wielopolski. The old castle, begun in the middle of the fourteenth century, acquired Renaissance and Baroque features through successive later alterations. Żywiec became part of Austrian Galicia after the First Partition of Poland in 1772.