A
Lusatian culture cemetery from around 750–550 BC is located in the present-day district of
Raków and it is now an Archaeological Reserve, a branch of the Częstochowa Museum.
Middle Ages According to archaeological findings, the first medieval settlement in the location of Częstochowa was established in the late 11th century within
Piast-ruled
Poland. It was first mentioned in historical documents from 1220, when Bishop of Kraków
Iwo Odrowąż made a list of properties of the
Mstów monastery. Two villages, Częstochowa and Częstochówka were mentioned in the document. Both of them belonged to the basic territorial unit of Slavic
Polish tribes (
opole), with its capital at Mstów. Częstochówka was located on a hill, where the
Jasna Góra Monastery was later built. In the late 13th century Częstochowa became the seat of a
Roman Catholic parish church, which was under the
Lelów deanery. The village was located in the northwestern corner of
Kraków Land,
Lesser Poland, near the
Royal Castle at
Olsztyn. Częstochowa developed along a busy merchant road from Lesser Poland to
Greater Poland. The village was ruled by a
starosta, who stayed at the Olsztyn Castle. It is not known when Częstochowa was granted a town charter, as no documents have been preserved. It happened sometime between 1356 and 1377. In 1502, King
Alexander Jagiellon granted a new charter, based on
Magdeburg rights to Częstochowa. In 1382 the Paulist monastery of Jasna Góra was founded by
Vladislaus II of Opole – the Polish
Piast prince of
Upper Silesia. Two years later the monastery received its now-famous Black Madonna icon of the Virgin Mary; in subsequent years became a centre of
pilgrimage, contributing to the growth of the adjacent town. In 1821, the government of
Congress Poland carried out a census, according to which the population of New Częstochowa was 1,036, while the population of Old Częstochowa was 2,758. Furthermore, almost four hundred people lived in several settlements in the area (Zawodzie,
Stradom, Kucelin). The idea of a merger of both towns was first brought up in 1815. In 1819, military architect Jan Bernhard planned and started the construction of
Aleja Najświętszej Panny Marii—the
Holy Virgin Mary Avenue, which is the main arterial road of the modern city. It connected Old Częstochowa with New Częstochowa. Finally, the two towns were officially merged on 19 August 1826. The new city quickly emerged as the fourth-largest urban centre of Congress Poland; surpassed only by the cities of
Warsaw,
Lublin, and
Kalisz. On 8 September 1862 a patriotic rally took place in the city, in front of St. Sigismund church. As a reprisal, Russian military authorities destroyed app. 65% of Częstochowa's Old Town, and introduced
martial law . During the
January Uprising, several skirmishes took place in the area of Częstochowa, with the last one taking place on 4 July 1864 near
Chorzenice. In 1846 the
Warsaw-Vienna Railway line was opened, linking the city with the rest of Europe. After 1870
iron ore started to be developed in the area, which gave a boost to the local industry. Among the most notable investments of the epoch was the Huta Częstochowa steel mill built by Bernard Hantke, as well as several textile mills and paper factories. In 1900, the traveling cinema of brothers Władysław and Antoni Krzemiński came to the city for the first time, after it was founded in
Łódź in 1899 as the oldest Polish cinema. In 1909, they settled in Częstochowa and founded Kino Odeon, the first permanent cinema in the city. An anti-Semitic
pogrom occurred in 1902. A mob attacked the Jewish shops, killing fourteen Jews and one
gendarme. Częstochowa entered the 20th century as one of the leading industrial centres of Russian Poland (together with Warsaw,
Łódź, and
Zagłębie Dąbrowskie). The city was conveniently located on the
Warta and other smaller rivers (
Kucelinka, Stradomka, Konopka). Real estate and land prices were low, compared to Łódź. The monastery attracted numerous pilgrims, who also were customers of local businesses. In 1904, Częstochowa had 678 smaller workshops, which employed 2,000 workers. In 1902, rail connection to the Prussian border crossing at
Herby Stare was opened, and in 1911, the line to
Kielce was completed. The
Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905–1907) began in Częstochowa as early as May 1904, when first patriotic rallies took place. On 25 December 1904 a man named Wincenty Makowski tried to blow up a monument of
Tsar Alexander II, which stood in front of the monastery. In February 1905, a general strike action was declared in the city, with workers demanding pay rises. In June 1905 street clashes took place in Częstochowa, in which 20 people were killed by Russian forces. Further protests took place in 1909 and 1912. The Germans killed 227 people (205 ethnic Poles and 22 Jews) in various places in the city, including the town hall courtyard, town squares and at a local factory (some estimates of victims put the number at more than 1,000; 990 ethnic Poles and 110 Jews). From the beginning of the occupation, the Germans initiated a plan of cultural and physical extermination of the Polish nation (see
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation). By a decision of 5 September 1939, one of the first three German special courts in occupied Poland was established in the city. On 6 September 1939 the
Einsatzgruppe II entered the city to commit atrocities against the population. On 14–15 September 1939 the Germans arrested around 200 inhabitants of the district of
Stradom. In order to terrorize the Polish population, on 9–11 November 1939 the Germans carried out mass arrests of dozens of Poles, including the mayor, vice-mayor, teachers, students, activists and local officials, but they were soon released. During the
AB-Aktion, the Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles in March, June and August 1940, and also imprisoned 60 Poles from
Radomsko and the
Radomsko County in the local prison in March 1940. Arrested Poles were then either deported to the
Sachsenhausen,
Buchenwald and
Ravensbrück concentration camps or massacred in the nearby forests of
Olsztyn and
Apolonka. Among the victims of the massacres committed in Olsztyn were school principals, teachers, lawyers, policemen, merchants, craftsmen, pharmacists, engineers, students and local officials, and among the victims of the Apolonka massacres were 20 girl scouts. and
World War II Under
German occupation Częstochowa administratively was a city-county (
Stadkreis Tschenstochau), part of the Radom District of the General Government. The
Polish resistance movement was active in the city, and units of the
Home Army and
National Armed Forces (
NSZ) operated in its area. A branch of the secret Polish
University of the Western Lands was located in the city, and it secretly continued
Polish education. The secret
Polish Council to Aid Jews "Żegota", established by the
Polish resistance movement operated in the city. On 20 April 1943 a
NZS unit attacked the local office of the
Bank Emisyjny w Polsce. After the collapse of the
Warsaw Uprising, Częstochowa was briefly the capital of the
Polish Underground State. On 9 April 1941 the Nazis created a
ghetto for Jews in the city. Approximately 45,000 of Częstochowa's Jews, almost the entire community, were killed by the Germans. Life in German-occupied Częstochowa is depicted in the
Pulitzer Prize-winning
graphic novel Maus, by
Art Spiegelman, the son of a Jewish Częstochowa resident. Before the
Holocaust, Częstochowa was considered a great Jewish centre in Poland. By the end of World War II, nearly all Jews had been killed or deported to
extermination camps to be killed, making Częstochowa what Nazi Germany called
judenfrei. There are known cases of local Polish men and women, who were captured and persecuted by the Germans for
rescuing and aiding Jews. These Poles were sentenced to death, prison or
concentration camps, in which some died, some survived, while the fate of many remains unknown. Poles who saved Jews in other places in the region were also either sentenced to death by the local German court or incarcerated in the local prison. The Germans also tried to obscure the Catholic shrine and pilgrim devotion by renaming the road leading to the pilgrimage church after Hitler, though they did allow some pilgrimage activity to continue. From 1941 to 1944, the German occuying administration operated the Stalag 367
prisoner-of-war camp for
Italian and
Soviet POWs in the city. During and after the
Warsaw Uprising, in August–October 1944, the Germans deported thousands of Varsovians from the
Dulag 121 camp in
Pruszków, where they were initially imprisoned, to Częstochowa. Those Poles were mainly old people, ill people and women with children. On 15 August 1991 John Paul II was named Honorary Citizen of Częstochowa. In 1998, the city was awarded the
Europe Prize by the
Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe for having made exceptional efforts to spread the ideal of European unity. On 26 May 2006 the city was visited by
Pope Benedict XVI. ==Climate==