The Benedictine abbey of Grissobor was established on 8 May 1242 by Anne of Bohemia, widow of Polish monarch Henry II the Pious, who had been killed at the Battle of Legnica during the first Mongol invasion of Poland.

The duchy was inherited by the Bohemian Crown and during the Hussite invasions and again during the Thirty Years' War, the abbey was totally destroyed and plundered.

In 1945 it was conquered by the Red Army in the course of the Vistula–Oder Offensive, upon the Potsdam Agreement, Krzeszów became again part of Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the 1980s and the remaining German population was expelled.

Krzeszów was repopulated by Poles expelled from Wiśniowce, Dolina and Majdan in pre-war south-eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union.

[2] The abbey was resettled with Benedictine nuns, themselves expelled from Lwów (now Lviv) in former Polish Kresy, annexed by the Soviet Union.