The region was not destroyed during World War II, thanks to which its rich historical architecture from various periods, from the Middle Ages to modern times, has been preserved.

Despite its enclosed geographical situation, Kłodzko Land since ancient times has been traversed by the Amber Road and other important trade routes connecting Bohemia with Silesia and Moravia, running over easily accessible mountain passes in the south and west, and along the Nysa water gap at Bardo.

Under Přemyslid rule, Kladsko became part of the Kingdom of Bohemia by 1198; it was administrated within the lands of Hradec Králové and governed by Bohemian burgraves like Witiko of Prčice (c.1120–1194), progenitor of the Vítkovci clan.

From the 13th century onwards, under the rule of King Wenceslaus I and his son Ottokar II, the area was largely settled by German colonists in the course of the Ostsiedlung migration.

A major battle with the royal Bohemian forces led by the Kladsko governor Půta III of Častolovice and the Silesian duke John I of Münsterberg was fought at Stary Wielisław on 27 December 1428.

Duke John was killed in action and Půta received his Duchy of Münsterberg (Ziębice) as well as Kladsko and the adjacent Silesian lands of Ząbkowice as a pledge from the hands of Emperor Sigismund.

After Půta's death, his widow Anne of Colditz sold Kladsko Land to the former Hussite leader Hynek Krušina of Lichtenburg in September 1440, and married him three weeks later.

Once elected king by the Bohemian estates, in 1458, he raised Kladsko to a county in its own right and conveyed the title of an Imperial count to his second son Victor, for which he obtained the confirmation by Emperor Frederick III the next year.

When the Bohemian Crown fell to the Austrian Habsburg monarchy in 1526, the rights of the Hardegg family were confirmed by King Ferdinand I. Johann von Hardegg finally sold Kladsko to Ferdinand in 1534/37; from that time on, the Habsburg rulers pledged the county several times: first to the Bohemian noble and former governor John III of Pernstein, later to the Salzburg administrator Ernest of Bavaria, who implemented stern measures of Counter-Reformation.

Even after the lost Battle of White Mountain, the estates refused to submit to Emperor Ferdinand II, who had their lands occupied and numerous punitive measures enacted.

During the Napoleonic War, in 1807, Kłodzko Castle was besieged by Confederation troops led by Jérôme Bonaparte, but successfully defended by the Prussian garrison under General Friedrich Wilhelm von Götzen the Younger.

Referred to as "Little Prague", the Kłodzko Valley region on the Nysa Kłodzka river was the focus of several attempts to reincorporate the area into Czechoslovakia, one of several Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts.

[6] After the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, the newly established First Czechoslovak Republic raised claims to Kłodzko Land, that were however rejected in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

While the area remained with the Free State of Prussia and the Weimar Republic, the Czechoslovak government had extended border fortifications erected around the Kłodzko Land just after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

Pressure brought on by the Soviet Union led to a ceasing of military operations, with the remaining German population and the Czech minority being expelled to Germany and Czechoslovakia.