Łomża

Lomza stands on the Narew in Mazovia, where river routes and agricultural land supported a market and administrative centre. Grain, livestock and woodland products moved between rural communities and the town, while roads linked the district with the wider Polish lands. Its institutions expressed the authority of Mazovian dukes before the region became more closely incorporated into the Polish Crown.

Łomża received municipal rights in 1416. In 1444 it was exempted from a transit tax on the Narew, and in the sixteenth century Sigismund II Augustus granted it three annual fairs. The town became an important political and economic centre and the seat of Łomża Land within the Masovian Voivodeship. The partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century brought a change of sovereignty.