Český Těšín

Český Těšín is a town of about 23,000 people in Karviná District, in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic, on the west bank of the Olza River in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia. It exists as a separate town because of the 1920 division of the region between Poland and Czechoslovakia: before that it was only the western suburb of Teschen, which after the split became Cieszyn on the Polish side. Together the Czech and Polish halves hold around 55,000 people. The castle of Těšín was first mentioned in a deed of Pope Adrian IV in 1155, and the settlement was first called a town in 1290. The historic centre is well preserved and protected as an urban monument zone. The town is ethnically and religiously mixed, has a surviving synagogue from 1928 to 1929, and is home to the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia, founded in 1948.