Rzeszów

Rzeszów was part of the emerging Polish state in the 10th century, fell to Ruthenian rulers and was recovered for Poland by Casimir III the Great, who granted it town rights in 1354. It prospered on the trade routes from Kraków to Lwów and from Lublin to Slovakia, despite a great fire in 1427 and Tatar raids in 1458 and 1502. In the 1580s Mikołaj Spytek Ligęza built a castle and a Bernardine church and monastery, and from 1638 the town belonged to the Lubomirski family, who made it the centre of their estates. The first Jews settled in the 15th century, and by the mid-18th century Poles and Jews lived here in almost equal numbers.

Swedish, Transylvanian and other armies sacked the town in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and from 1772 it spent 146 years under Austrian rule. The Galician railway arrived in 1858, and Rzeszów grew into a garrison town. After 1918 it became part of independent Poland, and the Central Industrial Region of the 1930s made it a centre of the defence industry, with the PZL aircraft-engine works opening in 1937.

German occupation from September 1939 renamed the town Reichshof. The intelligentsia were imprisoned and shot, and the Jews, more than a third of the population, were forced into a ghetto; some 20,000 Jews were murdered there or deported to Bełżec and Auschwitz, and only about 100 of the city's 14,000 pre-war Jews survived. The Home Army took the town in August 1944 before Soviet control was imposed. From 1945 Rzeszów was a provincial capital and grew quickly. In 1981 farmers' protests here led to the creation of Rural Solidarity, in 1999 it became capital of the Subcarpathian province, and since 2022 it has been a key hub for Western aid to Ukraine.

Rzeszów presents itself as a young, fast-developing city that has adapted to its heritage, and a full calendar of festivals backs the claim. The Carpathia Festival is an international music festival; the World Festival of Polish Diaspora Folk Ensembles brings folk groups of Polish emigrants from around the world; and Breakout Days, a blues and rock festival, honours Tadeusz Nalepa and his band Breakout. Other festivals celebrate optimistic films, the theatre artist Józef Szajna and the multicultural heritage of Galicia. The Artur Malawski Subcarpathian Philharmonic also runs the chamber music festival at Łańcut Castle each May.

The Wanda Siemaszkowa Theatre, opened in 1944 as the city's first professional theatre, and the Maska puppet theatre are the main stages, alongside a dance theatre and several galleries, one of them in the New Town Synagogue. The Ethnographic Museum keeps the folk costumes and woodcarving of the region.

Faith matters here: Pope John Paul II visited in 1991, when nearly a million people gathered, and the following year made Rzeszów the seat of a new diocese. Football support is split between two clubs, Stal and the multisport Resovia, which share the municipal stadium south of the centre. The city's long Jewish history is remembered in its two surviving synagogues and its cemeteries.

Rzeszów had about 199,000 inhabitants in January 2026, and unlike most Polish cities of its size its population is growing. Between 2017 and 2021 the city limits were extended to take in neighbouring villages, bringing its area to over 120 square kilometres, and the Olszynki Park tower, the tallest residential building in Poland, rises by the river.

The economy is built on aviation, IT and manufacturing. The old PZL works, now part of Pratt & Whitney, makes aircraft engines, the software group Asseco has its headquarters here, and pharmaceutical, food and household-appliance factories add to the mix. The city is home to several universities, and in 2011 Forbes ranked it among the most attractive mid-sized Polish cities for business.

The war in Ukraine has changed the city's role: its airport became the main transfer point for Western military supplies, and direct trains run to Lviv, Odesa and Kyiv. Day to day, residents shop in the malls of the New Town and the pedestrian streets of the centre, use a bus network of 49 lines, and the city is a gateway to the Bieszczady mountains, with many buses heading for Sanok.

Subcarpathia's everyday bread is proziaki, a soda bread from the Carpathian foothills: small rolls of wheat or wheat-rye flour, soured milk, salt and bicarbonate of soda — proza in the local dialect — traditionally baked on clay, cast-iron or tiled stovetops heated with wood. Some villages add buttermilk, cottage cheese or extra butter, and the rolls are eaten with fresh butter and salt, cottage cheese or jam, often with a glass of sweet or soured milk.

In the Bieszczady mountains to the south, the Lemko dish fuczki survives: fried pancakes of oat flour and sauerkraut, now served in many restaurants of the region, sometimes with regional cheeses. Pierogi are everywhere: the city centre has a pierogi house and inexpensive places to eat on the pedestrian streets, while pubs and restaurants on the Market Square combine beer with filling snacks and fuller Polish and international dishes.

The city also has a dairy museum, a reminder of the region's farming, and the food industry remains one of its employers.