Thietmar of Merseburg first mentioned the site as Salsa Cholbergiensis. Later on, the indigenous Slavic population faced discrimation from the Germans. The city later joined the Hanseatic League. Within the Duchy of Pomerania , the town was the urban center of the secular reign of the prince-bishops of Cammin and their residence throughout the High and Late Middle Ages.
From , it was part of the Prussian province of Pomerania. After the Nazis took power in Germany, the local Jewish population was discriminated against, deemed to be subhuman and eventually subjected to genocide. In , Polish and Soviet troops captured the town, while the remaining German population which had not fled the advancing Red Army was expelled in accordance to the Potsdam Agreement.
The original name of Cholberg was taken by Polish and Kashubian linguists in the 19th and 20th centuries to reconstruct the name. According to Piskorski and Kempke , Slavic immigration reached Farther Pomerania in the 7th century. The Pomeranians mined salt [13] in salt pans located in two downstream hills. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Budzistowo stronghold was the largest of several smaller ones in the Persante area, and as such is thought to have functioned as the center of the local Slavic Pomeranian subtribe.
In the 10th century the trade of salt and fish led to the development of the settlement into a town.
The missionary efforts of bishop Reinbern were not successful, the Pomeranians revolted in and regained political and spiritual independence. During the subsequent Christianization of the area by Otto of Bamberg at the behest of Boleslaw, a St. Mary's church was built. Besides St. Mary's, a St. John's church and a St. Petri's chapel were built. During the Ostsiedlung , a settlement was founded by German settlers some kilometers off the site of the Slavic one. Henceforth, the nearby former stronghold was turned into a village and renamed "Old Town" Latin : antiqua civitatae Colbergensis , German : Altstadt , Polish : Stare Miasto , first documented in and used until when it was renamed " Budzistowo ".
