Łowicz

Łowicz began as a gord guarding a ford over the swampy Bzura, first mentioned in a papal bull of 1136. Early in the 13th century the Piast dukes confirmed its ownership by the archbishops of Gniezno, and it stayed theirs for six centuries: in 1355 Archbishop Jarosław built a brick Gothic castle on the site of the gord, in 1358 he granted Magdeburg rights to a new town, and by the mid-14th century Łowicz and 111 villages formed the largest church estate in Poland. In 1433 its church became a collegiate church, the future cathedral.

As the residence of the primates of Poland, who acted as regents between the death of a king and the election of the next, Łowicz served from 1572 as a kind of second capital during each interregnum. The Swedish invasion of 1655–60 ended its prosperity, though one of the first Piarist colleges in the Commonwealth opened here in 1668, and the road between Warsaw and Dresden carried the Saxon kings through the town. After the Partitions the archbishops' estates were given in 1820 to Grand Duke Constantine of Russia and his wife Joanna Grudzińska, made Duchess of Łowicz; the young Chopin visited in 1826. Railways arrived in 1848, and a second line in 1866 made the town a junction.

In September 1939 Łowicz lay at the centre of the Battle of the Bzura, the largest battle of the German invasion; air raids killed hundreds of civilians and damaged the cathedral. The Germans set up a ghetto in 1940 and in March 1941 deported all its 8,000 or more inhabitants to the Warsaw Ghetto. Today the town is a prominent site of food production.

Łowicz is the historic capital of the Księżacy, the people of the former archbishops' estate, an ethnographic group that still keeps a distinct regional identity and its own dialect. Łowicz is known for its rainbow-coloured cloth and regional costumes, and for its paper cut-outs, wycinanki, as well as pottery and glass. Under communism the Sztuka Łowicka cooperative employed many folk artists from the surrounding villages.

The town keeps these traditions alive through its museum, whose collections of Księżacy material culture fill a baroque missionaries' house by Tylman van Gameren, and through the open-air museum at Maurzyce, where 42 buildings of the old Księżacy villages have been gathered and events such as Łowickie Żniwa, the harvest, are held. The museum building itself dates from the early 18th century.

The church gives the town its other identity. The cathedral, with its very rich baroque interior, was a collegiate church for centuries before Łowicz became the seat of its own diocese, and the Piarist church and the old canons' houses on the square recall the clerical town. Sport is local and modest: Pelikan Łowicz plays football in the lower leagues and Księżak Łowicz plays basketball.

About 27,000 people lived in Łowicz at the 2021 census. The town is the seat of a county in the Łódź province and a centre for the farming country around it.

Food production is the main employer. The Agros Nova plant, which makes jams, fruit juices and vegetable preserves, and the district dairy cooperative, whose plant dates from 1930, are both based here, and their products are popular in Poland and abroad. The rail junction arrived in the 19th century: the Warsaw–Vienna railway reached the town in 1848, and the line to Koluszki followed in 1866.

The railway shapes daily life as well. Łowicz and nearby Bednary form a major junction where the line from Warsaw splits towards Poznań and Łódź. Life centres on the two market squares, the parish churches and the schools, and the town has its own bishop, a rarity for a place of its size, which keeps church institutions prominent in the centre.

Łowicz is a prominent site of food production. The Agros Nova plant in the town produces jams, fruit juices and vegetable preserves, and the district dairy cooperative, whose plant dates from 1930, makes milk and dairy products, both of them popular in Poland and abroad.

The national dishes of central Poland — soups, dumplings and roasts — fill the menus of the town's restaurants, alongside the dairy products and preserves made in the town. The country around Łowicz is farmland, and the town has long been its market centre: in the Middle Ages its convenient location, royal privileges and frequent fairs helped it prosper, and its two market squares remain the heart of the town.

The places to eat are concentrated on and around the Old Market Square and in the streets towards the New Market, where small restaurants and cafés serve residents and day visitors from Warsaw and Łódź.