Görlitz ([ˈɡœʁlɪts] ⓘ; Upper Sorbian: Zhorjelc [ˈzhɔʁʲɛlts]; Polish: Zgorzelec;[a] Czech: Zhořelec; East Lusatian: Gerlz, Gerltz, Gerltsch[3][4]; Silesian: Görlic) is a town in the German state of Saxony.

The nearby Landeskrone mountain, as Businc, is considered the main stronghold of the early tribes and Gorelic is said to mean a small village.

The early Sorbian Milceni tribe were subjugated in 990 by the Margraviate of Meissen, a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire.

The settlement was then conquered by Polish ruler Bolesław I Chrobry in 1002 and briefly, from 1025 until 1031, was governed by Poland, after which the region fell back to the Margraviate of Meissen.

[10] In 1352 during the reign of Polish King Casimir III the Great, Lusatian German colonists from Görlitz founded the town of Gorlice in southern Poland near Kraków.

[9] The Protestant Reformation came to Görlitz in the early 1520s and by the last half of the 16th century, it and the surrounding vicinity, became almost completely Lutheran.

In 1623, during the Thirty Years' War, the town was captured and occupied alternately by Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire.

[14] In 1936, during a nationwide Nazi campaign of changing of placenames, two present-day districts of Görlitz were renamed to erase traces of Slavic origin—Leschwitz to Weinhübel and Nikrisch to Hagenwerder.

[20] The Nazis also established and operated two subcamps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, located in present-day districts of Biesnitz and Kunnerwitz, in which over 1,500 Jewish men and women were used as forced labour, and 470 of whom died.

[23] Several Polish citizens were detained in Görlitz and sentenced to prison or death at this court for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust.

[24] Near the end of World War II German troops destroyed all bridges crossing the Lusatian Neisse.

On 27 June 1994 the town became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Görlitz but it remains a Lutheran Protestant stronghold.

As soon as Poland signed the Schengen Agreement (20 December 2007), movement between the two banks of the river again became unrestricted, since border controls were eliminated.

[citation needed] In the case of Görlitz much of the funding for the renovations of the town's buildings has come from an anonymous donor, who, since 1995, has sent an annual donation of more than €500,000, totalling more than €10,000,000.

[citation needed] The town has a rich architectural heritage (Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and Art Nouveau).

It was hoped that the concept of Polish-German cooperation would be sufficient to convince the jury, but Essen won and Görlitz was placed second.

As a result of the campaign Görlitz was renamed the City of Culture in order to further German-Polish relations and to attract tourists from all over the world.

[32] Görlitz is situated on the border with Poland, adjacent to the Polish town of Zgorzelec on the opposite bank of the Lusatian Neisse.

Local public transport is provided by: The climate is oceanic (Köppen: Cfb) or on the western edge of humid continental (Dfb) at the 0 °C isotherm.

The location on the easternmost border of Germany, far from the sea, gives a climate less affected by prevailing westerly winds although these do reach further into the western half of Poland.

[37] The Görlitz weather station has recorded the following extreme values:[38] Due to the historical parts of the city, many movie-makers have used the various sites as locations.

[40][41] Other films shot in Görlitz include the 2013 war drama The Book Thief and the teen years in The Reader.

[42] The first freely elected mayor after German reunification was Matthias Lechner of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who served from 1990 to 1998.