Lewin Brzeski

Lewin Brzeski [ˈlɛvʲin ˈbʐɛskʲi] (German: Löwen; Silesian: Lwy) is a historic town situated in Brzeg County, Opole Voivodeship, south-western Poland. The total population of Lewin Brzeski was estimated at 5,736 inhabitants in 2019.

History

Located along the medieval trade routes from Silesia to Hungary, by the Amber Road and the Eastern Neisse river, the town of Lewin first developed in the Middle Ages as a market town, located within the Piast-ruled Kingdom of Poland and as a result of the fragmentation of Poland it became part of the duchies of Opole, Brzeg and Legnica. It is first mentioned in a contract from 1257, when a monastery run by the Knights Hospitaller in Łosiów purchased a mill near the town. Its name is of Old Polish origin and refers to hunting.

As early as the mid-13th century the city had received Magdeburg town rights, which granted the town a certain amount of autonomy. The town was built around a rectangular marketplace, and surrounded by a rampart with a palisade with a ditch below it that could, if necessary, through the opening of a lock could be filled with water from the Eastern Neisse. In addition, there were four city gates. In 1333 the town was granted new rights and privileges, such as the brewing of beer and the holding of Wednesday markets, by Duke Bolesław III the Generous. Lewin switched between the duchies of Legnica and Brzeg and remained under the rule of the Piast dynasty until 1675, although it fell under the suzerainty of the Bohemian (Czech) Crown in 1329, Hungary in 1469, and again Bohemia in 1490, then ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty until 1526 and the House of Habsburg afterwards.