The town lies on the headwater of the Drawa River, a right tributary of the Noteć, west of an expansive woodland with the protected area of the Drawsko Landscape Park.

From the 7th century onwards Slavic tribes settled along the shores of the Drawa River, where they erected a fortress a few kilometers north of Lake Lubie.

At that time, the fortress of Drawsko had been held by Duke Przemysł I of Greater Poland, but after his death the settlement was also acquired by the Margraves of Brandenburg.

They invited Premonstratensian monks from Belbuck (Białoboki) Abbey near Trzebiatów to found a monastery in their new territory.

The Uckermark knights Arnold, Konrad and Johann von Goltz were granted the right to develop the settlement into a town mentioned as Drawenborch.

It grew after the arrival of German colonists, allowing the margraves to grant it Magdeburg city rights in 1297.

The influx of colonists began to cease, although by the end of the 14th century the Dramburg Neustadt ("new town") had developed on the southern shore of the Drawa.

In 1454 the Knights sold the New March to the Hohenzollern elector Frederick II of Brandenburg, in order to raise funds for war with Poland.

A great fire destroyed a wide section of Dramburg in 1620, leaving only five houses unscathed, while five years later numerous citizens died from plague.

This led the Pommersche Saatzucht Gesellschaft based in Stettin (Szczecin) to use the Dramburg region as a testing area for its plant breeding experiments.