Every design for Krotoszyn

Few Polish towns can say that a veteran of the Battle of Grunwald founded them, but Krotoszyn can: Wierzbięta Krotoski laid it out next to an older village, and King Władysław II Jagiełło granted it town rights. It grew at the crossing of the Kalisz–Głogów and Toruń–Wrocław trade routes, and after a great fire King Casimir IV gave it a weekly market and three annual fairs, which made its name across the region.

Krotoszyn calls up memories of many arrivals. Protestant refugees came here during the Thirty Years' War, the princes of Thurn und Taxis received a principality centred on the castle as compensation for giving up the Prussian postal service, and Fryderyk Chopin stopped in the town on his travels. Under Prussian rule Poles kept their own societies, a cooperative bank and a branch of the Sokół gymnastic society, and the town was liberated by insurgents on New Year's Day of the Greater Poland uprising.

The Ratusz still presides over the market square, with the Bazylika Świętego Jana Chrzciciela close by and the Muzeum Regionalne im. Hieronima Ławniczaka holding the details. If you were born here, take this map as a reminder that your town has always been a crossroads, and that you carry a bit of every road that met in it.