Poznań

Poznań stands on the Warta, where the old ducal stronghold on Ostrów Tumski faces the chartered town laid out on the left bank under Magdeburg law in 1253. It was a capital of the early Piast state and the seat of Poland's first cathedral, and in 1295 Przemysł II chose it as his residence when he was crowned king at Gniezno. By 1337 it was the chief city of Greater Poland, with a walled town and a ring of suburbs under bishops and nobles.

Its great age began under Władysław Jagiełło, when the road from Lithuania to the west and the closing of Gdańsk to Polish goods turned Poznań into a crossroads. The town received staple rights in 1394, and by the late sixteenth century it was a main centre of the fur trade. Bishop Jan Lubrański founded the Lubrański Academy in 1519, and the Jesuits opened a college in 1571. Fire destroyed the castle, town hall and monastery in 1536. The Swedish invasion of 1655 broke a long run of prosperity, and wars, plague and the flood of 1736 cut the population from about 20,000 around 1600 to 6,000 around 1730. German and Dutch settlers rebuilt the suburbs. Prussia took Poznań in the Second Partition of 1793, and in 1806 Polish volunteers helped Napoleon's army drive the Prussians out.