Lublin

That wealth grew from the road between Kraków and Vilnius. Casimir III, seeing the value of the site, built a masonry castle on the hill in 1341 and ringed the town with walls, and a royal trade privilege of 1392 made Lublin the meeting point for goods moving between Poland and Lithuania; its fairs became the largest in the Commonwealth. In the 16th century it was also a city of learning and of many faiths. Calvinists and the radical Polish Brethren gathered here, the Crown Tribunal, the highest court of Lesser Poland, sat here from 1578, and the Jewish yeshiva, whose head the king raised to the rank of a university rector in 1567, earned Lublin the name of the Jewish Oxford. The Deluge ended this prosperity, when Russian and Cossack troops invaded in 1655 and the Swedes followed a year later.