Sieradz

Sieradz stands on the Warta in the heart of central Poland. One of the country's old ducal centres, it received town rights in the thirteenth century and gave its name first to a duchy and then to a voivodeship. Casimir the Great built a royal castle here, and Polish rulers held assemblies in the town.

In 1445 the nobles meeting at Sieradz elected Casimir IV Jagiellon king. The town prospered as a trading centre into the sixteenth century, drawing merchants even from Spain and Portugal. Swedish invasions, epidemics, fires and floods brought a long and steep decline in the seventeenth century; rebuilding began in the next. Prussia annexed Sieradz in 1793, before it passed to the Duchy of Warsaw and then Congress Poland.