Local trade routes connecting Europe with the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire resulted in the city's early prosperity and development.

Rzeszów is also developing as a regional tourist destination; its Old Town, Main Market Square, churches and synagogues are among the best preserved in the country.

In recent years, the population of Rzeszów has grown from 159,000 (2005) to over 301,000 (2022),[1] mainly owing to an influx of Ukrainian refugees after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Further plans for extending the city's borders include incorporating surrounding counties to strengthen its function as a metropolitan center in southeastern Poland.

Sometime between 11th and 13th century the town was conquered and subsequently annexed by the East Slavic Ruthenians from the weakened and fragmented Polish state (see Testament of Bolesław III Wrymouth).

After the reunification of Poland following the fragmentation period, Rzeszów remained in Ruthenian hands until 1340, when King Casimir III the Great eventually recaptured the area, inviting his knights to govern the re-acquired land.

According to some sources, at that time Rzeszów was inhabited by the Walddeutsche, and was called Rishof (during World War II, the Germans renamed it Reichshof).

The town was granted Magdeburg rights, it had a parish church, a market place and a cemetery, and its total area was some 1,5 km2.

Magdeburg rights entitled Rzeszów's local authorities to punish criminals, build fortifications and tax merchants.

Earlier, in 1427, Rzeszów had burned to the ground in a big fire, but the town recovered after these events, thanks to its favorable location on the main West – East (Kraków – Lwów) and North – South (Lublin – Slovakia) trade routes.

The 16th century was the time of prosperity for the town, especially when Rzeszów belonged to Mikołaj Spytek Ligęza (since the 1580s), who invested in infrastructure, building a castle, a Bernardine church and a monastery.

During the Great Northern War, the Swedes again captured Rzeszów, in 1702, then several different armies occupied the town, ransacking it and destroying houses.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the town's population was composed of Poles (Roman Catholics) and Yiddish Jews in almost equal numbers (50.1% and 49.8%, respectively).

Rzeszów was home to a large garrison of the Austro-Hungarian Army, and in the city of Przemyśl, located nearby, there was a major fortress.

In the late fall of 1914, the front line was established between Tarnów and Gorlice, and Rzeszów became an important center of the Imperial Russian Army, with large magazines of food and ammunition located there.

The Austrian administration returned, but wartime reality and damage to the town had a negative effect on the population, and the quality of life deteriorated.

On 12 October 1918, Rzeszów's mayor, together with the town council, sent a message to Warsaw, announcing loyalty to the independent Second Polish Republic.

On November 1, after clashes with German and Austrian troops, Rzeszów was liberated, and the next day, mayor Roman Krogulski took a pledge of allegiance to the reborn Polish state.

In 1939, Rzeszów had 40,000 inhabitants, but its dynamic growth was stopped by the Invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II.

The occupiers established a Nazi prison, in which they imprisoned over 1,100 Poles, especially the intelligentsia, arrested in the region between October 1939 and June 1940, during the Intelligenzaktion.

[11] Persecution of Polish intelligentsia was continued with the AB-Aktion, and on 27 June 1940, 104 Poles from the local prison were exterminated in the forest of Lubzina.

On 25 May, during Action Kosba, Home Army soldiers killed the Gestapo henchmen Friederich Pottenbaum and Hans Flaschke on a Rzeszów street.

The NKVD immediately opened a prison in the cellars of the Rzeszów Castle, sending there a number of Home Army soldiers.

By June 1940, the number of Jews in Rzeszów had decreased to 11,800, of whom 7,800 were pre-war residents of the city; the rest were from the surrounding villages.

In final "Aktions" in the fall of 1943, most Jewish slave labour was transported in Holocaust trains to the newly reopened Szebnie concentration camp.

After rumors of the murder of a Christian girl in the city surfaced, on 1 June 1945,[22] or after the mutilated body of 9-year-old Bronisława Mendoń was found in the basement of a tenement building largely inhabited by Holocaust survivors on 11 June 1945,[23][24] the Polish Communist Citizens' Militia arrested all of Rzeszów's remaining Jews,[22] or the Jewish inhabitants of the area and some Jews transiting through the railway station,[23][24] and led them through the city amidst an angry crowd, while at the same time looting the homes of the arrested Jews.

[citation needed] In 2017–2021, Rzeszów's city limits were greatly expanded by including the villages of Bzianka,[27] Miłocin[28] and Pogwizdów Nowy.

Rzeszów is located on the main West-East European E40 Highway, which goes from Calais in France via Belgium, across Germany, Poland, Ukraine and onto Russia and Kazakhstan.

The S19 Expressway connects Rzeszów with Belarus and Slovakia as part of planned Via Carpathia route from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Universities: Notable high schools: There are honorary consulates of the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia in Rzeszów.