A Polish stronghold was built in Nysa in the 11th and 12th century due to the proximity of the border with the Czech Duchy.

Nysa was granted town rights around 1223 by bishop Lawrence, confirmed by Duke Bolesław II Rogatka of Legnica in 1250, and attracted Flemish and German settlers.

In the early-14th century Nysa became an important trade- and craft-center of Poland, before it passed under the suzerainty of the Bohemian Crown in 1351,[2] under which it remained until 1742.

During the Hussite Wars, in 1428 it was the site of the Battle of Nysa [cs], with Poles and Czechs fighting on both sides.

In 1624 the Kolegium Carolinum Neisse (today's I Liceum Ogólnokształcące), one of the most renowned schools of Silesia, was established as a Jesuit college.

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, officer of the American Revolutionary War and French Revolution and co-author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, was imprisoned in the town by the Prussians[5] in 1794.

[7][failed verification] During World War I and the post-war Polish Silesian Uprisings, a prisoner-of-war camp was located in the town.

[6] Charles de Gaulle, future leader of French Resistance against German occupation in World War II and later president of France, was imprisoned there in 1916, and after an unsuccessful escape attempt he was deported to a POW camp in Szczuczyn.

[10] The city's German population was mostly evacuated before the advancing Eastern Front, with some 2,000 mostly ill people and elders remaining.

[12] In the following years, new Polish settlers, some whom were themselves expelled or resettled from what is now western Ukraine (see: Kresy), made Nysa their new home.

[2] As a result of destruction during World War II, in particular the heavy fighting of the Vistula–Oder Offensive and the Lower Silesian offensive of early 1945, during which the Red Army pushed the German Army Group A out of southwest Poland and the adjacent German Lower Silesia, the historic aspect of the town has only partially been preserved due to wartime destruction.

After Polish takeover of the town, hundreds of historic burgher houses deemed reconstructable were struck down in line with the Communist's ideological goals of degermanization and struggle against the bourgeoisie as well as to provide material for the re-building of Warsaw.

The company constructed delivery vehicles, namely the ZSD Nysa, FSO Polonez and, until recently, the Citroën C15 and Berlingo.