Stęszew

Stęszew is a town in western Poland, in Poznań County within the Greater Poland Voivodeship, with 5,248 inhabitants at the 2004 count. It stands on the Samica Stęszewska River and has three lakes inside its limits, Dębno, Bochenek and Lipno. The settlement was once an important stop on a trade route from Silesia, and King Casimir III the Great granted it city rights in 1370. It was a private town of the Polish nobility until the Second Partition of Poland brought it under Prussian rule in 1793; in 1799 Countess Dorota Jabłonowska sold it to Prince William I of the Netherlands, and it passed through the Duchy of Warsaw and a second Prussian annexation before Poland regained it after the First World War. During the German occupation of the Second World War the town was renamed Seenbrück, and local Poles were expelled, imprisoned or murdered. Today the S5 expressway bypasses it to the west, a station serves the Poznań to Wolsztyn railway line, and its best-known sports club is Lipno Stęszew.