Grudziądz

Grudziądz stands high above the Vistula, its great brick granaries forming a distinctive riverfront. The Teutonic Order strengthened an earlier stronghold here in the thirteenth century, and the settlement below its castle received Chełmno law in 1291. Grain stored in the tall warehouses could be sent down to the river, making the buildings part of both commerce and the town's defences.

Grudziądz later became a royal town of Poland. The Reformation transformed its religious life, but in 1597 Sigismund III ordered churches previously taken by Protestants returned to Catholics. Jesuits established a college in the seventeenth century. After Prussia annexed the town in 1772, Frederick the Great ordered a new fortress built; it resisted French attacks during the long Prussian Napoleonic campaign of 1806–1807.