Stará Ľubovňa

Sister cities

• Bălți
• Nowy Sącz
• Połaniec
• Lubliniec
• Vsetín
• Balchik
• Svaliava

History

In 1292 Stará Ľubovňa is first mentioned as Libenow. In 1311, the Ľubovňa Castle was mentioned. In 1323, King Charles I granted the castles of Ľubovňa and Plaveč to Palatine Philip Drugeth. At that time, Lubowla was held by Count Nicholas. In 1342, Louis the Great granted the settlement town privileges. In 1384, a meeting took place in Lubowla between Sigismund of Luxembourg, Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Polish nobles, to discuss the conditions for the Hungarian princess Jadwiga's arrival in Poland to assume the throne after her father. Sigismund, already King of Hungary by then, held another meeting here in 1412 with Władysław Jagiełło, King of Poland. At this meeting Ľubovňa was among 16 Spiš towns given by the Sigismund of Luxemburg as a deposit to King Władysław II of Poland. The pledge was part of the Treaty of Lubowla and was thought to be only for a short time, but it finally lasted for 360 years. Ľubovňa became the seat of a separate starostwo of Spiš. The first starosta was Paweł Gładysz, who spoke Hungarian; he was succeeded by the famous knight Zawisza the Black. In 1587, during Archduke Maximilian of Austria’s bid for the Polish crown, his supporters seized the castle; however, after Maximilian’s defeat at Byczyna, it returned to Polish hands. During the Swedish Deluge, the Crown Treasury was brought to the castle from Kraków. Only in the course of the first Partition of Poland in 1772 during the reign of Maria Theresa of Austria the territory came back to the Kingdom of Hungary. The pledge was actually an advantage for the towns concerned because they did not have to submit themselves to the comitatus or nobility and had a neutral position in turmoils between Poland and Hungary. Before the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918, Stará…

Geography

Stará Ľubovňa is situated on the Poprad River south of the Polish border and east of the High Tatras. It is one of the oldest towns in the Spiš, an historic administrative county (comitatus) of the Kingdom of Hungary, and is today the administrative capital of the district of Stará Ľubovňa in the Prešov Region.