Tykocin

Tykocin ty'koćin is a small town in north-eastern Poland, with 2,010 inhabitants (2012), located on the Narew river, in Białystok County in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is one of the oldest towns in the region, with its historic center designated a Historic Monument of Poland. The name of Tykocin was first mentioned in the 11th century. Through the 14th century, it was a castellany in the Duchy of Masovia on the border with pagan Lithuania. Tykocin received its city rights from prince Janusz I of Warsaw in 1425, but several months later, the settlement was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (within the Polish-Lithuanian Union) by the Polish king Władysław II Jagiełło. Shortly later, in around 1433, Duke Sigismund Kęstutaitis gave the town along with other surrounding villages to Jonas Gostautas, and it became the most important seat of the Lithuanian Gostautai noble family. In the 1542, upon the death of Gostautai family's last member, the town was acquired by Polish king and Lithuanian Grand Prince Sigismund II Augustus who had the medieval stronghold remodelled into a Renaissance castle. One of the largest arsenals of Poland was located in Tykocin. It subsequently became a royal town of the Polish Crown, located within the Podlaskie Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province and was eventually awarded to Hetman Stefan Czarniecki for his military service during the Swedish invasion of Poland in 1661. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Tykocin was granted new privileges by kings Stephen Báthory and Władysław IV Vasa. Later on, through the marriage of Czarniecki's daughters, it passed to the Branicki (Gryf coat-of-arms) family. From 1513 until the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Tykocin was a county (powiat) seat. It was Tykocin, where in 1705, King Augustus II the Strong established the Order of the White Eagle, the highest and oldest Polish order. Most of Tykocin's landmarks was built in this era, including the Holy Trinity Church, monasteries of the Congregation of the Mission and the Bernardines, the former 17th-century military hospital, the synagogue and the statue of hetman Stefan Czarniecki.