Lwówek Śląski

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Lwówek Śląski

	(Coat of arms)


Country	Poland
Voivodeship	Lower Silesian
Mayor	Ludwik Kaziów (2005)
Area	16.61 km²
Population - city - urban - density	10,300 (2000) /km²
City rights	1217
Area code	+48 075
Car plates	DLW
Municipal Website

Lwówek Śląski (German: Löwenberg (help·info)) is a town in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in Poland. Situated on the Bóbr river, Lwówek Śląski is about 30 km NNW of Jelenia Góra and has a population of about 10,300 inhabitants.

Panaroma

[edit] History

By 1209 Lwówek Śląski, founded by the Dukes of Wrocław, had important privileges, such as the rights to brew, mill, fish, and hunt within a mile's radius of the settlement. In 1217 it received town rights; its style of governance was duplicated by other local towns as Lwówek Śląski rights (Löwenberger Recht). The dukes then constructed a castle, documented for the first time in 1248. In the second half of the 13th century Lwówek Śląski became the capital of a Silesian Piast principality, whose duke took the title of a Duke of Silesia and Lord of Löwenberg.

After the death of Duchess Agnes of Habsburg, the widow of Bolko II, the last Piast of Świdnica, the region was inherited with the Duchy of Świdnica-Jawor (Schweidnitz-Jauer) by the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1393. The town's placement on a traderoute allowed it to become one of the more prosperous towns in Bohemia. During the Thirty Years' War, Lwówek Śląski was devastated by Swedish and Imperial troops, especially between 1633-1643. By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the town was largely destroyed and had a decimated population of only hundreds.

The town slowly recovered during its reconstruction, but began to prosper again after its acquisition by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1741 during the Silesian Wars. Troops of the First French Empire occupied Lwówek Śląski in May 1813, and Napoleon Bonaparte stayed in the town from August 21-23 while organizing his defenses against the troops of General Gebhard von Blücher of Prussia. A few days later the Prussian army defeated the Frenchmen; more than 3,000 French soldiers drowned in the flooding Bóbr River as they retreated.

Like the rest of the Kingdom of Prussia, the town became part of the German Empire in 1871. Until 1939 Lwówek Śląski was a provincial town in the Prussian province of Lower Silesia. In the last days of World War II the town's medieval center was 40% destroyed and numerous buildings of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque were lost. At war's end Lwówek Śląski was transferred to Poland.

The town is now the seat of Powiat Lwówecki.

[edit] Coat of arms

Town hall

The coat of arms of Lwówek Śląski is a vertically divided shield depicting the red-white chessboard of the Świdnica Piasts in the sinister field and a right-facing crowned red lion in the dexter field.