The town is one of the oldest in Upper Silesia, the site of a hill fort where the old trade route from the Moravian Gate down to Kraków crossed the Oder river.

However, the first confirmed mention of Racibórz was made in 1108 in the Gesta principum Polonorum chronicle by the Benedictine monk Gallus Anonymus,[3] at a time when the Polish duke Bolesław III Wrymouth had to ward off the attacks by the forces of Duke Svatopluk of Bohemia invading from the Moravian lands in the south.

The Polish rule over the Racibórz area was confirmed in 1137, it was incorporated into the Duchy of Silesia according to the Testament of Bolesław III in the following year.

Racibórz was an important center of beer production, and the townspeople enjoyed a privilege that allowed brewing already in the early 12th century.

He had the settlement beneath his residence laid out and the area colonized by Flemish merchants, the first coin with the Polish description "MILOST" was issued in Racibórz in 1211.

When in 1327 Duke Leszek of Racibórz paid homage to the Luxembourg king John of Bohemia, his duchy became a Bohemian fiefdom.

The Bohemian feudal suzerainty, confirmed in the 1335 Treaty of Trentschin, led to the seizure of Racibórz as a reverted fief, when the line of the Silesian Piasts became extinct upon Duke Leszek's death in 1336.

The Racibórz citizens retained their autonomy and the town developed to an important commercial centre for the region with significant cloth, tanning and brewing industries.

In 1683, on his way to the Battle of Vienna, Polish King John III Sobieski stopped in Racibórz, which he called a beautiful and fortified town in a letter to his wife Queen Marie Casimire.

[8] After World War I, the Upper Silesian plebiscite was held in 1921, in which 90.9% of votes in Ratibor town were for Germany and 9.1% were for Poland.

[12] During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, the Einsatzgruppe I entered the town on September 4, 1939, to commit atrocities against Poles.

At the same time the expulsion of Germans started, while the town became wholly part of Poland as defined at the Potsdam Conference.

As a result, the Racibórz Dolny flood control reservoir located nearby the town was built and officially opened in 2020.

[22][23] The officially protected traditional beverage from Racibórz is local beer, which is produced in various styles (as designated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland).