The town has a 14th-century church of St. Jacob, and the 19th-century palace of the Goetz family (founders of the Okocim Brewery).

The town was founded in 1385 by Spytko II of Melsztyn, the castellan of Biecz, with permission of Queen Jadwiga of Poland.

Brzesko still retains the medieval shape of its town center, with a market square and the Gothic church of St. Jacob (1447).

During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, the Wehrmacht arrived in Brzesko on 5 September 1939.

[3] Under German occupation, the town became part of the kreis (county) Tarnów in the Kraków District of the General Government, a separate administrative region of the Third Reich.

[6] Several Poles were imprisoned by the Germans in the local prison and then deported to concentration camps for rescuing Jews.

The three military cemeteries were all commissioned by the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of War between 1914-1915 and designed by the architect Robert Motka.

Around 200 Jews were killed by the Nazis at the cemetery on 18 April 1942 and additional persons from the area who had been murdered were buried there as well.

These, thanks to the funding from abroad, as well as the work of the Brzesko city council and the Museum of Bochnia, have continued into the twenty-first century.