Rydzyna is commonly referred to as "the pearl of the Polish Baroque" due to its preserved Old Town core and a high abundance of historical monuments.

Rydzyna was a private town, administratively located in the Kościan County in the Poznań Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown.

From October 1939 to February 1940, during the Intelligenzaktion, the Germans carried out mass executions of Poles from the Leszno County, including Rydzyna, in the forest near the town.

[6] In February 1940, the Germans arrested local Polish parish priest Aleksander Sterczewski, who was imprisoned in Rawicz, then deported to concentration camps and killed in Dachau (see Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland).

At the end of the 17th century, Italian architects Joseph Simon Bellotti and Pompeo Ferrari erected the present Baroque castle on its ancient foundations.

However wall-paintings and stucco works in representative rooms, made by the best Italian artists, were not destroyed completely, and the castle was restored and expanded by Prince August Sułkowski, who purchased the Leszczyński estates in 1738.

In the center of the Market Square a unique Holy Trinity column was erected in 1761 by sculptor Andrew Schmidt in memory of the plague that decimated the town in 1709.