Cieszyn

Cieszyn is a border town in southern Poland on the east bank of the Olza River and the administrative seat of Cieszyn County in the Silesian Voivodeship. It has roughly 32,000 inhabitants and faces the Czech town of Český Těšín across the river. Both towns belong to the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia and once formed a single town that was the capital of the Duchy of Cieszyn, ruled by the Piast dynasty until 1653 and afterwards by the Habsburgs. The town is known in Czech as Těšín and in German as Teschen. When Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1920, the smaller western suburbs became the separate town of Český Těšín. The settlement was first mentioned in 1155, and its municipal motto, in Latin, is Amore et non dolore, meaning by love and not by pain. Cieszyn has long been an important centre of Polish Protestantism, and it hosts the Cieszyn Summer Film Festival.