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Zittau is situated at an altitude of 242 m on the river Mandau near its confluence with the river Neiße in the Görlitz district in eastern Saxony at the border to Poland. The municipality has a population of about 25,700 (2005).

The oldest mention of Zittau is found in a document of 1238, a contract between the king of Bohemia and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in Prague where a man caled Henricus of Zittaus was listed as one of the witnesses. King Ottokar II II Přemysl of Bohemia visited Zittau in 1255 and determined its new boundaries by riding his horse around the town. At the same time Zittau was granted a town charter. Until the 14th century the town belonged to Bohemia. The town then joined the Upper Lausitz Union of towns which initiated its separation from Bohemia. Due to its location on the important trading route in the Neiße valley Zittau soon became a rich town. The Hussites conquered the town in 1424, and in 1538 the Reformation was introduced. After the Battle at the White Mountain (Bílá Hora, today part of Prague) (1620) during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) many Bohemian Protestants emigrated to Zittau. The Czech Protestant community existed in Zittau until the mid 19th century. In 1635 Zittau and the Upper Lausitz became part of Saxony. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) the town was set on fire by Austrian troops and large parts of the town were destroyed.

After the connection of Zittau to the railroad system in 1859 the town soon became a centre of machine and textile industry. During the Nazi era all of the Czech inhabitants of the Zittau region were forced to leave the country. At the end of World War II the river Neiße became the new border between Germany and Poland. Zittau thus lost its former borough of Großporitsch (Polish: Porajów).

The technical schools which were founded in Zittau after the war obtained the status of a technical university in 1988. In 2004 the central German, Czech and Polish celebrations of the expansion of the European Union took place in Zittau.

The picture on glass no.1818 [above] shows the town hall of Zittau. It was built in 1840–1845 by construction director Carl August Schramm on the basis of a Italian neo-Renaissance and Classicist design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.