Śrem

Śrem grew beside a Warta ford on the route from Silesia to Poznań. A fortified settlement on the right bank guarded the crossing, while a market developed opposite it. In 1253 the dukes Przemysł I and Bolesław the Pious granted the settlement town rights. Śrem later became a royal town and the seat of a starosta, enjoying periods of prosperity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before wars, epidemics and disasters brought decline. Prussia annexed it in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.