[2] The first owner of the town was Otton (z Pilczy) Pilecki, who was given the Łańcut estate by the Polish king, Casimir III the Great, in 1349, as a reward for his service.

It was last owned until 1944 by the Potocki family, and made infamous in late 16th century during the times of Stanisław Stadnicki,[4] who was known as 'the Devil of Łańcut' (Polish: diabeł łańcucki) for his violent behaviour.

In the 1830s, Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Polish pharmacist and inventor, known as the pioneer of the world's petroleum industry, was an apprentice in a pharmacy in Łańcut.

[5] At the end of the 18th century, Duchess Izabela Lubomirska established a distillery on the vast estate of the Lubomirski family in Łańcut.

Count Alfred Wojciech Potocki, a grandson and heir of the Duchess, started to run the Łańcut and Lwów Lubomirski estates in 1823.

Prior to World War II, Łańcut had a thriving Jewish community constituting about one-third of the city population.

[11] During the subsequent German occupation, the Einsatzgruppe I entered the town between September 17 and October 5, 1939, to commit various atrocities against Poles.

[15] The Germans executed several Poles in the town for rescuing Jews, while at least one Polish man managed to escape and survive.

[2] The last owner of Łańcut, Alfred Antoni Potocki, (14 June 1886 – 30 March 1958), was one of the richest men in prewar Poland, accumulating a fantastic collection of art during his tenancy.

[18][19][20] Shortly before the arrival of the Red Army in 1944, he loaded 11 railway carriages of a specially chartered train to Vienna, with his most valuable possessions (about 700 boxes of movable property) and fled to Liechtenstein.

The Festival is a series of modern and classical music concerts performed by distinguished European soloists, ensembles and choirs.

Łańcut is located on the main West-East European E40 Highway, which goes from Calais in France via Belgium, across Germany, Poland, Ukraine and on to Russia and Kazakhstan.