Welcome to Częstochowa!
Częstochowa is a city in the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland. Częstochowa and the monastery of Jasna Góra are holy places for Polish and foreign Roman Catholics.
Częstochowa (German: Tschenstochau, Czenstochau) is a city in southern Poland on the Warta River with 217,530 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship (administrative division) since 1999 and was previously the capital of the Częstochowa Voivodeship (1975–1998). However, Częstochowa is historically part of the Lesser Poland region, not of Silesia, and before 1795, it belonged to the Kraków Voivodeship. Częstochowa is located in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. It is the largest economic, cultural, and administrative hub in the northern part of the Silesian Voivodeship.
The city is known for the famous Pauline monastery of Jasna Góra, which is the home of the Black Madonna painting, a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Every year, millions of pilgrims from all over the world come to Częstochowa to see it. The city also was home to the Jewish Frankist movement in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
The city has undertaken excavation of an ancient site of Lusatian culture and has a museum devoted to this. The ruins of a medieval castle stand in Olsztyn, approximately 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the city center.