Ryn

Ryn stands between Lakes Ryn and Ołów in the Masurian lake country. A substantial Teutonic castle rose on an older Prussian fortified site, and by the late fourteenth century onwards it was the seat of an Order commander, whose district was restored after the peace of 1466. The settlement below it was recorded in 1405; from the fifteenth century its inhabitants were mostly Polish.

Tatar raiders burned Ryn in 1657 and carried away many inhabitants. Plague followed in 1709–1711, yet the settlement remained an administrative centre for its rural district. Frederick William I granted it a town charter in 1723, when church services were held in Polish. Beneath the castle, a channel linked the lakes with the pond of a mill established by the Order.