Lublin, administrative centre of the voivodship and the capital of the Lublin Region, and home to 365 thousand inhabitants, is the biggest town in Eastern Poland. The location of the town atop loessial rolling hills of the Lublin Upland in the valley of the Bystrzyca and its tributaries is one of its assets. During the 5th and 7th centuries the inhabitants of Lublin grew in numbers, and by 1317 Lublin was granted municipal status. In 1474 Lublin became the capital of the voivodship, a role it has continuously played to this day. During the years of the first Republic, Lublin, which was centrally located, was inhabited by different nationalities and religious denominations that constituted a rich and varied community.

Situated on Europe’s major routes that connected the West with the countries of the North and South-East, in the mid-14th century Lublin became a hub of brisk international trade. At the same time, during the reign of King Sigismund II Augustus, Lublin was an ideological capital of the Polish Republic - it was here that a real union between the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania was formed. At the turn of the 14th century, after the establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian state, Lublin’s location changed. Once a frontier town, Lublin lay now in the centre of the state, halfway between Kraków, the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, and Vilnius, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the city on the Bystrzyca river was also halfway from one capital to another, but this time between Warsaw (first the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw, then of the Kingdom of Poland and, finally, of the whole country when Poland had regained her sovereignty), and Lviv (first the capital of Galicia, and then of western Ukraine). This geographical and political location of Lublin had a substantial influence on the city’s role and significance in Poland’s history. This influence is visible also today. (more)