In 1241 the wooden stronghold of Chrzanów was put to the torch by Mongol hordes invading Poland from the east.

The town of Chrzanów was rebuilt according to the Magdeburg Law in the mid-14th century under the reign of King Casimir III the Great.

From the time of its construction in the 14th century until 1640 the town was the property of the Ligęza family of the Półkozic coat of arms.

At least from the early 15th century a parish school existed next to Chrzanów's Church of St Nicholas.

In the 16th century King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland bestowed a new privilege on the town, allowing for four extra fairs.

During the Great Northern War Chrzanów was plundered and put to the torch by Swedish troops of King Charles XII.

From 1804 to 1822 Chrzanów was owned by Duke Albert Casimir of Saxe-Cieszyn, son of the late King of Poland, Augustus III of Saxony.

Following the fall of Napoleon, a treaty among Austria, Prussia and Russia was concluded during the Congress of Vienna resulting in creation of the Free City of Kraków on 3 May 1815.

The period of the Free City of Cracow was a time of prosperity and rapid development for Chrzanów and its residents.

The former owner, Duke Albert Casimir of Saxe-Cieszyn, bequeathed the town to Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria (1822), who in turn sold it to the Cracovian Senator and MP from Chrzanów Jan Mieroszewski.

In 1856 Mieroszewski decided to sell his Chrzanów estate to a group of Wrocław entrepreneurs, one of whom, Emanuel Loewenfeld, soon became the sole owner.

The revolt was doomed, however, and in September 1846 Chrzanów with the entire Free City of Cracow was annexed to the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia.

This initiated dynamic development of the town in S-W direction and intensive urbanization of the neighbourhood continued in the interwar period.

), a residential area between Henry Avenue and Oświęcimska St. and housing estates at Kolonia Fabryczna and Rospontowa constructed for the employees of Fablok works.

With the outbreak of World War II (1 September 1939) the town was flooded with refugees from Upper Silesia.

Public buildings and shops had all signs written in Polish removed and all streets received German names.

[4][non-primary source needed] German occupation was terminated on 24 January 1945 when Chrzanów was taken over by Soviet troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front.

After 1945, new enterprises were created in the town (e.g. a dairy, a cold storage plant, a slaughterhouse) and new residential areas (housing estates Północ - from 1961, Południe - from 1979, Trzebińska and so on) and cultural centres (e.g. County Cultural Centre, the construction of which was initiated in 1959, and Chrzanów Museum founded in 1960).

In 1970-71 a new town centre was constructed focusing around the Millennium Square (Plac Tysiąclecia) and the Victory and Liberty Monument.

The oldest preserved seals of the town of Chrzanów are charged with an effigy of St Nicholas, the patron-saint of the local church, who holds a crosier in his right hand and a book in his left and wears bishop's vestments and a bishop's mitre on his head.

This coat of arms had been used by the town until c. 1809, when the authorities of the Duchy of Warsaw to which Chrzanów belonged to then, annulled all municipal coats-of-arms.

In the right field of the shield were the arms of Saxony (black and golden stripes divided by a green crown-shaped half-wreath).