Cieszyn Silesia
region in Central Europe
Cieszyn Silesia, Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia (Polish: Śląsk Cieszyński [ˈɕlɔ̃sk tɕɛˈʂɨj̃skʲi] ; Czech: Těšínské Slezsko [ˈcɛʃiːnskɛː ˈslɛsko] or Těšínsko [ˈcɛʃiːnsko] ; German: Teschener Schlesien or Olsagebiet) is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered on the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by the Olza River. Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic. It covers an area of about 2,280 square kilometres (880 sq mi) and has about 810,000 inhabitants, of which 1,002 square kilometres (387 sq mi) (44%) is in Poland, while 1,280 square kilometres (494 sq mi) (56%) is in the Czech Republic.
The historical boundaries of the region are roughly the same as those of the former independent Duchy of Cieszyn. Currently, over half of Cieszyn Silesia forms one of the euroregions, the Cieszyn Silesia Euroregion, with the rest of it belonging to Euroregion Beskydy.
Administrative division
From an administrative point of view, the Polish part of Cieszyn Silesia lies within the Silesian Voivodeship and comprises Cieszyn County, the western part of Bielsko County, and the western part of the town of Bielsko-Biała.
The Czech part lies within the Moravian-Silesian Region and comprises the Karviná District, the eastern part of the Frýdek-Místek District, and the eastern parts of the Ostrava-City District and of the city of Ostrava itself.
History
Cieszyn Silesia covers the area of the former Duchy of Teschen, which existed from 1290 to 1918. Before 1290 the area constituted a castellany, which together with Castellany of Racibórz formed the Duchy of Racibórz in 1172. From 1202 it was a part of the united Duchy of Opole and Racibórz.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q126781. Authority coordinates are 49.749, 18.626. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1290, 1918 and 1172.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cieszyn Silesia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.