page_title: History of Wrocław
section_title: Bohemia and Hungary
hierarchical_section_title: History of Wrocław / Bohemia and Hungary
context_page_description: Wrocław has long been the largest and culturally dominant city in Silesia, and is today the capital of Poland's Lower Silesian Voivodeship.
  The history of Wrocław starts at a crossroads in Lower Silesia. It was one of the centres of the Duchy and then Kingdom of Poland, and briefly, in the first half of the 13th century, the centre of half of the divided Kingdom of Poland. German settlers arrived in increasing numbers after the first Mongol invasion of Poland in 1241, and Wrocław eventually became part of the Kingdom of Bohemia after the extinction of local Polish dukes in 1335. After the War of Austrian Succession, the city and region were annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, and later became part of the German Empire. After World War II, Wrocław and most of Silesia were transferred to Poland and its population, almost totally German-speaking, was expelled.
context_section_description: In 1335, the city was incorporated with almost the entirety of Silesia into the Kingdom of Bohemia, and a Landeshauptmann (Provincial governor) was appointed to administrate the country. Between 1342 and 1344 two fires destroyed large parts of the city. Four years later Casimir III of Poland renounced all dynastic rights in Silesia in the treaty of Namslau/Namysłów and Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, visited the town. His successors Wenceslaus and Sigismund became involved in a long lasting feud with the city and its magistrate, culminating in the revolt of the guilds in 1418 when local craftsmen killed seven councillors. In a tribunal two years later, when Sigismund was in town, 27 ringleaders were executed. He also called up for a Reichstag in the same year, which discussed the earlier happenings in the city.
  In June 1466, in Wrocław, Polish diplomat Jan Długosz held a meeting with a papal legate, starting a peace process between Poland and the Teutonic Order, which a few months later culminated in the signing of a peace treaty in Toruń that ended the Thirteen Years' War, the longest of Polish–Teutonic wars.
  When George of Poděbrady became king of Bohemia the city opposed the Hussite and instead sided with his Catholic rival Matthias Corvinus. After Breslau fought alongside Corvinus against Bohemia in 1466 the Silesian classes rendered homage to the king on 31 May 1469 in the city, where the king also met the daughter of mayor Krebs, Barbara, whom he took as his mistress. In 1474 the city was besieged by combined Polish-Czech forces, however in November 1474 Kings Casimir IV of Poland, his son Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Matthias Corvinus of Hungary met in the nearby village of Muchobór Wielki (present-day district of Wrocław) and in December 1474 a ceasefire was signed, according to which the city remained under Hungarian rule. Matthias Corvinus incorporated the city with Silesia in his dominion, which returned to Bohemia when he died in 1490. 1475 marks the beginning of movable type printing in the city and in Silesia, when Kasper Elyan opened his printing shop (Drukarnia Świętokrzyska). That same year he published the Statuta synodalia episcoporum Wratislaviensium, which contains the first ever text printed in the Polish language. It was also the first ever printing in Silesia. The first illustration of the city was published in the Nuremberg Chronicle in 1493. Documents of that time referred to the town by many variants of the name including Wratislaw, Bresslau and Presslau.
caption: Wrocław historic City Hall built in a typical 14th century Brick Gothic
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2020:01:27 00:09:08", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "314", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6488", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "838", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "802"}