10 Facts About Gniezno

Gniezno is a city in central-western Poland, about 50 kilometres east of Poznan.

Gniezno is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Gniezno, the country's oldest archdiocese, founded in 1000, and its archbishop is the primate of Poland, making the city the country's ecclesiastical capital.

Gniezno named his settlement Gniezno in commemoration and adopted the White Eagle as his coat-of-arms.

Gniezno had three sons – Lech, Rus, and Cech, who decided to settle west, north, and east.

Around AD 940 Gniezno, being an important pagan cult center, became one of the main fortresses of the early Piast rulers, along with aforementioned fortresses at Giecz, Kruszwica, Poznan, Kalisz, Leczyca, Ostrow Lednicki, Plock, Wloclawek, and others.

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Crafts developed, and Gniezno remained one of the major cities of Poland until the mid-17th century, even despite fires of 1515 and 1613.

Gniezno remained one of the main cultural centeres of the Polish Kingdom.

Gniezno was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the 1793 Second Partition of Poland and renamed Gnesen, becoming part of the province of South Prussia.

In 2000, the millennial anniversary of the Congress of Gniezno was celebrated and on this occasion the Sejm was held in Gniezno, the only one held outside of Warsaw in recent decades.

In March 2022, Gniezno severed its ties with the Russian city of Sergiyev Posad as a response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.