It was founded in 1474 as
Sol-na-Gorodtse (). After the
Khan of Kazan razed it to the ground in 1536, a wooden fort was constructed to protect the settlement against further Tatar incursions. For the following three centuries, Balakhna prospered as a center of
saltworks and
grain trade. By the
Time of Troubles, it was the twelfth largest city in Russia.
Adam Olearius visited and described the town in 1636. That year several shipwrights from
Holstein built the first Russian ships here, thus establishing Balakhna as a foremost center of national river shipbuilding. The people of Balakhna were also reputed for their skills in knitting and making colored tiles, which were used for decoration of the Savior Church (1668) and other local temples. Balakhna is one of the few Russian cities shown on the
1689 Amsterdam World Map (labeled
Balaghna). The northwestern part of Balakhna is known as
Pravdinsk. It used to be a separate
urban-type settlement before it was merged into Balakhna in 1993. The settlement was named after the Moscow
Pravda newspaper, which at some point may have been the largest consumer of
newsprint produced at the local
paper mill. ==Administrative and municipal status==