Słupca
Słupca is a county town located on the Mesza river, on the Wrzesińska (Września) Plain, west of Konin and 70 km away of Poznań, in the eastward direction. The town’s advantageous situation in the centre of Poland offers it beneficial developmental opportunities.
History
The town was located (founded) under the Magdeburg law in 1290 and subsequently re-founded in 1296, then applying the Środa regulations. The town belonged to the Poznań bishopric at that time. Its development was hindered by a Teutonic Order raid of 1331, after which Słupca was surrounded with ramparts, constructed in the latter half of 14th century. Throughout the two centuries that followed, Słupca ranked amongst Wielkopolska’s largest cities.
The town underwent an economic collapse in 17th century, resulting from the Swedish invasion of 1655–1660. It is to that period that a stirring story of Inflant nobleman Jan Patkul dates. The Swedish king Charles XII is said to have stayed for the night in one house in Słupca, holding in his hand a chain pulled through a wall, with which the said Patkul was hog-tied.
Following 2nd Partition of Poland (1793), Słupca was made part of the Prussian Partition. A year after, during the Kościuszko Insurrection, a rallying point for insurgents from the area of Wielkopolska was established there; it was joined by General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, among others. As part of the decisions made at the Vienna Congress in 1815, the town was thenceforth made part of the Russian Partition area. Its advantageous location by the Warsaw–Berlin tract, in proximity of the Prussian-Russian border, proved beneficial to development of trade and contraband locally.
In 1915, the Germans established a camp for POWs between Słupca and Strzałkowo.
The town was liberated in January 1945.
Worth Seeing
Relicts of the mediaeval ramparts, originally ca. 1,100 m long, are visible in Okopowa Street. Of interest is the St. Laurentius’s parish church; it was there that Poland’s earliest-ever clockwork mechanism has been discovered, a miniature of which to be seen at the Regional Museum.
The town’s southern area is where you can come across a seventeenth-century wooden church of St. Leonard’s and the Assumption of Our Lady. Renovated in 1990s, its interior’s presentable baroque outfit appears now in its beauty.
A nineteenth-century former postal inn building has also survived in Słupca.
Angling lovers can find attractions for themselves at the Słupeckie Lake, one of Wielkopolska’s largest barrage tanks.
Not far from Słupca, by the road to Strzałkowo, is a prisoners-of-war cemetery from the time of the First World War (1914–1918) and the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919–1921.
