| Łowicz | |||
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| Top: Kurkowa, Middle left: New Town Market Place Royal Castle, Middle right: Stace Łowicz Bottom left: Błonie, Bottom right: Museum | |||
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Łowicz
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| Coordinates: | |||
| Country | Poland | ||
| Voivodeship | Łódź | ||
| County | Łowicz County | ||
| Gmina | Łowicz (urban gmina) | ||
| Established | before 1136 | ||
| Town rights | before 1298 | ||
| Government | |||
| • Mayor | Krzysztof Kaliński | ||
| Area | |||
| • Total | 23.41 km2 (9 sq mi) | ||
| Population (2006) | |||
| • Total | 30,204 | ||
| • Density | 1,290.2/km2 (3,341.6/sq mi) | ||
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | ||
| Postal code | 99-400 to 99-402 | ||
| Area code(s) | +48 46 | ||
| Car plates | ELC | ||
| Website | http://www.lowicz.eu/ | ||
Łowicz [ˈwɔvit͡ʂ] is a town in central Poland with 30,383 inhabitants (2004). It is situated in the Łódź Voivodeship (since 1999); previously, it was in Skierniewice Voivodeship (1975–1998). Together with a nearby station of Bednary, Łowicz is a major rail junction of central Poland, where the line from Warsaw splits into two directions - towards Poznań, and Łódź. Also, the station Łowicz Main is connected through a secondary-importance line with Skierniewice.
The town has an important ethnographic museum (Muzeum w Łowiczu) exhibiting Polish art and historical artifacts from the region. Also, Łowicz features a popular skansen with traditional wooden houses. It is a vast open-air display of historical structures depicting traditional Polish village-life; a collection of artifacts spread over a 17-hectare site, just outside the town.[1] Łowicz has also a football team called Pelikan, who languish in the lower divisions of the Polish leagues.
Near the town is the first welded road-bridge in the world, built in 1929 across the river Słudwia Maurzyce. It was designed in 1927 by Stefan Bryła from the Warsaw University of Technology.[2]
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Łowicz was a residence of Polish primates in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. They served as regents when the town became a temporary "capital" of Poland during the interregnum. As a result, Łowicz has its own bishop and a basilica in spite of its considerably small size. The ruins of a former bishop's castle can be found on the outskirts of town. Napoleon Bonaparte is believed to have stayed in one of the houses on the main square.
Łowicz was at the centre of the largest battle of the German invasion of Poland, the Battle of the Bzura River in the opening campaign of World War II.
In 1940, during the Nazi Occupation of Poland, German authorities established a Jewish ghetto in Łowicz,[3] in order to confine its Jewish population for the purpose of persecution and exploitation.[4] The ghetto was liquidated in March 1941, when all its 8,000–8,200 inhabitants were transported in cattle trucks to Warsaw Ghetto,[5] the largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe with over 400,000 Jews crammed into an area of 1.3 square miles (3.4 km2). From there, most victims were sent to Treblinka extermination camp.[6][7][8][9]
Łowicz is twinned with:
Media related to Łowicz at Wikimedia Commons
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