The first mention of Katowice goes back to 1598 and is found in notes made by the Reverend Kazimierski who visited the Bogucice parish. However, the history of the city was marked by fates of several much earlier Slavic agricultural settlements dating from the 14th and 16th centuries as well as smithies which now make up the city quarters. It is the smithies, emerging in place of shallowly buried iron ore bodies, that influenced development in the areas which until recently have still been covered by swamps and woodland crossed by a dense network of rivers. Obviously, along with the smithies the settlements came into existence - and this is how the origin of present Katowice looks like. The Bogucice Smithy situated on the bank of the Rawa River was mentioned for the first time in 1397 and it was one of the oldest plants of this type in Poland. It operated until the eighteenth century when huge metallurgical furnaces appeared. Apart from the smithy in Bogucice (Bogucka Kuźnia) there still existed three similar plants in Załęże, Szopienice and Roździeń quarters. The latter one is linked to Walery Roździeński - the author of the poem entitled "Officina ferraria". A similar origin is ascribed to some other quarters of Katowice. 

Nevertheless, the oldest one is Dąb mentioned in some documents as early as in 1299, which was for several hundred years the property of the Monastery of Guards of God's Grave in Miechów.

It is difficult to trace back the origins of the name "Katowice". Probably, it is derived from the name or nickname of the first settler - i.e. the leaseholder Kat, or from "kąty" which was an old word for huts dwelt by workers who felled trees and transported wood to the smithy in Bogucice.  

In the latter half of the 16th century in the area granted to smiths there appeared agricultural settlements which took the nature of farms. In about 1580 Andrzej, a smith from Bogucice, founded on his land a farm village named Katowice and described as "villa nova" in the Bogucice parish inspection report of 1598 - a new village. For the next several centuries the two settlements - the agricultural one and the blacksmith's one co-existed in harmony.

  The development of Katowice village began with construction of the railway line from Berlin to Mysłowice (1848). Taking over the land property by the Winckler family was a breakthrough in the development process of Katowice. Rapid industrialization and development of communication lines fostered urbanization of the village. There also could be observed a rapid increase in population (especially in the non-agricultural one) and more and more inhabitants wanted the village to be transformed into the city. Great credit in this field goes to Friedrich Grundmann - the contemporary general manager of the Tiele-Winckler property and to Dr. Richard Holtze. Their aspirations came into fruition in the latter half of the 1960s of the 19th century: on 11 September 1865 a document granting municipal rights to Katowice was signed. Before long Katowice acquired the status of a poviat too. In the period of Grundmann's governance a first monumental object was erected, i.e. the Evangelical Church at Warszawska Street (1856-1958), next Our Lady's Church in the neo-Gothic style at Mariacka Street (1870), the Brothers of the Order of St. John of God's monastery and hospital, the convent and orphanage conducted by the Nuns of the Order of St. Hedwig as well as St. Stephen's Church in Bogucice. In 1989 a resilient group "Kattowitzer Aktiengesselschaft" set up its head office in Katowice and next 5 well-known banks did the same. Under the Prussian Annexation (since 1742) in the area of what is now Katowice, and particularly in the 19th century, industry was developed - especially steelworks and coal-mines. At the end of the 19th century several institutions that decisively influenced the development of the young economic centre were set up here, i.e.: the Upper Silesian Coal Convention, the Association of Coal and Iron Industrialists, miners' guilds, the State Post Directorate, the District Court, the Directorate of Prussian Royal Railways. 

At the beginning of the 20th century Katowice was enriched by the Municipal Theatre constructed at the Market Square in the years 1905-1907 according to the design by Karl Moritz - an architect from Cologne. The new century brought to the city the third railway station in its history, preserved to this day, though used for a different purpose). The outbreak of World War I did not cause damages and losses, in Katowice but it contributed to industrial development and prosperity of the city in particular to iron and steel works. Military activities did not affect the population, and large participation in the three Silesian Uprisings as well as in the Plebiscite action were the factors that determined incorporating Katowice into the reborn Polish state (20 June, 1922). Soon the city became the capital of the autonomous Silesian Voivodship, the seat of the Silesian Parliament and the Upper-Silesian Mixed Commission. 

The interwar period was characterized by intensive development and Katowice underwent transformation from an industrial centre somewhere in the Prussian province into the greatest economic centre in Poland and the capital city of the richest region in the country. In 1924 there were seated as many as 53 banks, 14 foreign diplomatic missions and several international concerns. Along with the influx of capital new objects and quarters arose - particularly the southern part of the city was well-developed. There were constructed exclusive residential estates and monumental sacred buildings. Since 1926 a modern airport in Muchowiec provided a permanent connection to Warsaw.

At the beginning of 1939 the Polish Army withdrew from Katowice while fights between German troops and Polish boy and girl scouts in the area of the Parachuting Tower at Tadeusz Kościuszko's Park took place on a scale that has been unexplained till now. On 8 September 1939 the entire territory of Upper Silesia was incorporated into the Third Reich. It was then that the Nazi burnt the magnificent building of synagogue at Mickiewicza Street and demolished the building of the Silesian Museum, which has not been reconstructed by now.

After 1945 the city regained its former prominence of the inustrial and administrative centre. Changing the name of Katowice into Stalinogród in the years 1953-1956 constituted a three-year episode in its history. It regained its reputation of the scientific and cultural centre and became a university town too. Great housing estates and a few elegant buildings were constructed.

Nowadays Katowice is a regional and national investment leader. It entered the 21st century with a huge capital and signs of the deep transformation can be perceivable at every turn. Since the self-government was reconstituted in 1990 the city has no longer been associated with industry and it creates its new identity.