Żywiec (Polish pronunciation: [ˈʐɨvjɛts], German: Saybusch) is a town on the River Soła in southern Poland with 31,194 inhabitants (2019).

Żywiec was a private town, administratively located in the Kraków Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown.

In 1624 it was sold by the Komorowski family to Constance of Austria, queen consort of the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa.

A second noteworthy church, the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary's Birth, was constructed and expanded during the first half of the 15th century, before being renovated in Baroque fashion after a fire in 1711.

In 1810 it was purchased by Prince Albert of Saxony, son of King Augustus III of Poland and again ruled with the neighbouring Silesian Duchy of Teschen (Cieszyn).

The town also houses the Żywiec Brewery, established by Charles' son Archduke Albert in 1852, and purchased by Heineken International in the 1990s.

[7] Between September and December 1940, the Nazi authorities expelled 17,413–20,000 Polish inhabitants from around Żywiec county in the so-called Action Saybusch conducted by the Wehrmacht and Gestapo.

[10] In 1941, Nazi German Oberpräsident of Upper Silesia Fritz Bracht, while visiting the town, declared that there will be no Poles in the county in five years.