Nowy Targ - Timeline of Town History

Timeline of Town History

• 1308 - Cistercians receive a land grant to form new settlements in the mountain region. A border settlement called Stare Cło (German: Altzoll, English: Old Customs Post) is founded soon thereafter.
• 1346 - Nowy Targ founded by King Casimir the Great, based on the Stare Cło settlement, and granted significant internal autonomy based on Magdeburg law.
• 1487 - King Casimir IV Jagiellon grants the rights to two annual festivals, and a weekly market fair on Thursdays. (The weekly open-air market continues to this day, now on Thursday and Saturday mornings.)
• 1533 - Nowy Targ obtains a statute requiring merchants to pass through the city when crossing the border.
• 1601 - Great fire destroys the parochial church and city records.
• 1656 - Swedish troops sack the town during the Deluge.
• 1710 - Another fire consumes 41 houses and the church.
• 1770 - Nowy Targ annexed by Austria (see: Partitions of Poland).
• 1886 - City Hall opens.
• 1914 - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is arrested as a possible spy in southern Poland by Austrian authorities; he is jailed in Nowy Targ for approximately 12 days.
• 1918 - The region rejoins the restored Poland after World War I.
• 1933 - Polish president Ignacy Mościcki visits; the successful ice hockey team Podhale Nowy Targ is founded.
• 1939 - German forces invade on 1 September, at approx. 16:30.
• 1941 - Resistance movement called the Tatra Confederation formed in Nowy Targ.
• 1942 - Jewish ghetto liquidated by Germans on 30 August.
• 1945 - The Red Army forces out German occupants on 29 January.
• 1966 - Born Wojciech Wiercioch, Polish writer.
• 1979 - Pope John Paul II visits Nowy Targ on 8 June, during his first pilgrimage to Poland.

• 1998 - The successful floorball team KS Szarotka Nowy Targ is founded.