Czarnków

Saint Mary Magdalene church

The area was included within the emerging Polish state in the 10th century by its first historic ruler Mieszko I of Poland. An early Polish stronghold and settlement was founded in the 10th century.[2][3] In the early 12th century, it was a stronghold of pagan Pomeranians, ruled by local Pomeranian ruler Gniewomir. It was reconquered by Polish Duke Bolesław III Wrymouth in 1108, and shortly after it was noted for the first time in the early 12th century Gesta principum Polonorum by Gallus Anonymus, the oldest Polish chronicle. Czarnków developed at the intersection of trade routes connecting Poznań with Pomerania and Wieleń with Nakło nad Notecią.[2] During the fragmentation of Piast-ruled Poland it formed part of the Duchy of Greater Poland, and afterwards it was a private town, administratively located in the Poznań County in the Poznań Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown.[4] From 1244 until 1407 Czarnków was the seat of a castellany.

In the late 13th century Polish monarch Władysław I Łokietek granted Czarnków to the Polish noble family of Nałęcz, which then changed its name to Czarnkowski after the town.[3] The Czarnkowski family built a new castle (first time noted in 1331 and destroyed at the end of the 17th century) and established town privileges before 1369. Czarnków remained a private town of the Czarnkowski family until the mid-17th century, and the family's Nałęcz coat of arms remains the town's coat of arms to this day. In the 16th (or 15th) century the family erected the Gothic Saint Mary Magdalene church, which became its official burial site, and it is the most distinctive historic landmark of the town.[2] Afterwards, the town was owned by the Polish families of Grzymułtowski, Gembicki, Naramowski, Poniatowski, Świniarski.[2] In the 17th century Protestant refugess from Silesia settled in the town and helped develop its cloth industry.[3]

The town was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772. It was regained by Poles in 1807 and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw,[3] in 1815 it was reannexed by Prussia, and from 1871 to 1919 it also formed part of Germany. Poland regained independence after World War I in 1918, and during the Greater Poland uprising (1918–19) the town was recaptured by Polish insurgents.[3] Afterwards it was divided by the new German-Polish border. The western part of the town remained within Weimar Germany and was renamed Deutsch Czarnikau in 1920 and Scharnikau in 1937, while Polish Czarnków became a county seat within the Poznań Voivodeship.

During the German occupation (World War II), in November 1939, the Germans murdered many inhabitants of Czarnków during large massacres of Poles carried out in Mędzisko as part of the Intelligenzaktion.[5] In August 1944, the Germans carried out mass arrests of local members of the Home Army, the leading Polish underground resistance organization.[6] Czarnków was eventually liberated in January 1945.[3]

Evening view of the Plac Wolności with the Saint Mary Magdalene church on the left and the illuminated town hall in the middle

• medieval layout of the town
• Gothic church of Saint Mary Magdalene with rich Renaissance and Baroque interior[2]
• Plac Wolności (Liberty Square), the town's main square filled with historic townhouses
• 19th-century Eclectic town hall
• Muzeum Ziemi Czarnkowskiej, local historic, archaeological and ethnographic museum
• Neoclassical Świniarski Manor
• County Office
• old brewery
• 18-19th-century houses
• Park Miejski im. Stanisława Staszica (Stanisław Staszic City Park) with the only ski jump in the Polish Lowlands[3]
• Marina on the Noteć river
• remnants of a 19th-century Jewish cemetery

• Wilfried Erdmann (born 1940), sailor
• Jan of Czarnków, Polish 14th-century chronicler and Deputy Chancellor of the Crown
• Wincenty I Niałek, 13th-century archbishop of Gniezno
• Milena Olszewska (born 1984), Polish archer
• Frieda Riess (1890–c. 1955), photographer
• Reinhold Sadler (1848–1906), former Governor of Nevada
• Wacław Taranczewski (1903–1987), Polish painter and professor of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków
• Adam Słodowy (1923–2019), Polish author and TV host
• Kamila Switalska, Famous Zigane Female DJ.