Wałcz

Wałcz is a town in northwestern Poland, in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, where it is the seat of the authorities of Wałcz County. Its German name was Deutsch Krone. The town stands among lakes, chiefly Raduń and the Zamkowe lake, which lie within its administrative limits, and the river Pilca runs through it. A privilege to found the town, then called Arnskrone, was granted on 23 April 1303 by the margraves of Brandenburg, and the grant included town rights, farmland, meadows and two lakes. In 1368 the Wałcz land was joined to Poland and the town became a royal city. Prussia seized it in 1772 at the first partition of Poland, and it was captured on 12 February 1945 after the Pomeranian Wall defences were broken, and Polish settlers then arrived. Today it is an administrative, economic and cultural centre with a military garrison and a regional museum, and in mid-2021 it had 25,802 inhabitants.