Przemyśl's ring of 44 forts held off a Russian army for months in 1914
Przemyśl sits in a natural gap between mountains and lowlands on the San River, which is why it has changed hands so often. Before the First World War, Austria ringed it with 44 forts, the third-largest fortress in Europe, and that barrier helped stall a 300,000-strong Russian army heading for Kraków.
After Kraków, it is the oldest city in southeastern Poland, founded in the 8th century as a stronghold of a West Slavic tribe, the Lendians. It passed to Great Moravia, then to the Polish state of Mieszko I, and for centuries bounced between Polish rulers and Kievan Rus, captured by Vladimir I of Kiev in 981, back to Poland in 1018, retaken by the Rus in 1031. Casimir III brought it firmly into the Polish kingdom in 1340, and the city grew rich on trade routes in the 16th century.
It was a meeting place of peoples. Poles, Jews, Germans, Czechs, Armenians and Ruthenians lived side by side, and in the mid-18th century Jews made up a majority. In 1754 a Catholic bishop opened the city's first public library, only the second in the whole Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After Austria annexed the region in 1772, officials briefly considered Przemyśl for their provincial capital before choosing Lviv, and a Ruthenian library founded in 1804 made it, for a time, the leading centre of the Ruthenian cultural revival.
As rifled artillery made old walls useless, Austria spent 1888 to 1914 building a vast new fortress, its forts spread around a circle 45 km long. Designed for 85,000 soldiers, it ended up holding 120,000. The first Russian siege in 1914 was lifted, but a second, begun that October, ended in surrender on 22 March 1915 through hunger and exhaustion, after defenders had destroyed the fortifications. The Russians took 126,000 prisoners, and Central Powers troops recaptured the ruins on 3 June 1915.
Between the wars it was the largest city between Kraków and Lwów. Its Old Town is now a Historic Monument of Poland.
Source: Przemyśl
