Strzelno

Privilege of Pope Celestine III for the monastery in Strzelno issued in Rome in 1193.

Establishment of the town is connected to Piotr Włostowic, a 12th-century Polish noble and voivode of Polish monarch Bolesław III Wrymouth. He is considered the founder of the Church of St. Cross. In the 1180s, in what was then the village Strzelno, a Norbertine nuns convent was founded. The monastery church originally bore the name church of St. Trinity, in later years the name was extended to St. Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Strzelno received town rights in 1231.

During the German occupation of Poland (World War II), the Polish population was subjected to mass arrests, deportations, murder and expulsions. Many Poles, including activists and teachers, were either murdered or deported to Nazi concentration camps during the Intelligenzaktion. In 1939, the families of the victims, as well as owners of larger houses, shops, workshops and barbershops were expelled to the General Government, and their property was handed over to Germans as part of the Lebensraum policy.[1] In 1940 the Gestapo carried out massacres of around 200 Poles in the nearby Kurzebiela forest.[2]

The Norbertine monastery complex with the Romanesque Saint Procopius Church and the Romanesque-Gothic-Baroque Holy Trinity Church is listed as a Historic Monument of Poland.[3] The 12th-century church of Saint Procopius, in the shape of a Romanesque rotunda, is considered to be one of the best preserved original churches in Poland. There is a museum in the monastery.

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  Monastery (back view)
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  Romanesque Saint Procopius Church
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  Baroque facade of the Holy Trinity Church
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  One of the Romanesque columns of virtues in the Holy Trinity Church

• football team - Kujawianka Strzelno
• junior handball team - Alfa Strzelno

Born in Strzelno:

• Ridley Haim Herschell (1807–1864), British evangelist
• Jakub Cieślewicz (1846–1930), Polish medical doctor, participant of Polish uprisings of 1863–1864 and 1918–1919 and social activist
• Albert Abraham Michelson (1852–1931), Nobel Prize-winning American physicist and scientist
• Carl Minkley (1866–1937), American politician
• Stanisław Gądecki (born 1949), archbishop of Poznań, deputy chairman of Polish Episcopal Conference
• Radosław Hyży (born 1977), Polish retired basketball player and member of the Poland men's national basketball team, and basketball coach