Poręba is a town in

Zawiercie County __NOTOC__ Zawiercie County ( pl, powiat zawierciański) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local governmen ...

Silesian Voivodeship Silesian Voivodeship, or Silesia Province ( pl, województwo śląskie ) is a voivodeship, or province, in southern Poland, centered on the historic region known as Upper Silesia ('), with Katowice serving as its capital. Despite the Silesian ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

, with 8,525 inhabitants (2019). The town has the area of , and lies along National Road Nr. 78; it also has a rail station on a line from Miasteczko Śląskie to

Zawiercie Zawiercie is a city in the south of Poland located in the Silesian Voivodeship with 49,334 inhabitants (2019). It is situated in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland near the source of the Warta River. The town lies near the historical region of ...

. Almost half of Poręba's area (49%) is covered by forests.

History

Poręba belongs to

Lesser Poland Lesser Poland, often known by its Polish name Małopolska ( la, Polonia Minor), is a historical region situated in southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków. Throughout centuries, Lesser Poland developed a ...

, and until 1795 (see Partitions of Poland), it was part of the Kraków Voivodeship of the

Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown Lesser Poland Province ( pl, Prowincja małopolska, la, Polonia Minor) was an administrative division of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland from 1569 until 1795 and the biggest province of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The name of the pro ...

. First mention of the Poręba settlement comes from 1375, and at that time, it was called Black Poręba, located by a lake called Black Lake. Until the 16th century, the area was sparsely populated, and covered by dense woods. The development of industry resulted in influx of settlers, and in the 16th century Poręba became a center of early steel and iron plants. The village belonged at that time to the Pilecki family. In 1795, after the

Third Partition of Poland The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Poli ...

, it was annexed by

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

. The first

blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric p ...

was built in 1798 by efforts of Count . In 1806 the village was regained by Poles, and included within the short-lived Polish

Duchy of Warsaw The Duchy of Warsaw ( pl, Księstwo Warszawskie, french: Duché de Varsovie, german: Herzogtum Warschau), also known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleonic Poland, was a French client state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during ...

, and in 1815, it became part of

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

-controlled

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It ...

, and Poręba further developed, becoming a local industrial center. In 1918 Poręba returned to the re-created Poland, and in the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

, the settlement belonged to

Kielce Voivodeship Kielce Voivodeship ( pl, województwo kieleckie) is a former unit of administrative division and the local government in Poland. It was originally formed during Poland's return to independence in the aftermath of World War One, and recreated within ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Poręba was occupied by Germany from 1939 to 1945. Poręba developed further in the 1950s, when local metal plant began manufacturing

machine tool A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All ...

s. A

vocational school A vocational school is a type of educational institution, which, depending on the country, may refer to either secondary or post-secondary education designed to provide vocational education or technical skills required to complete the task ...

was opened in 1946, which in the late 1960s moved into a new complex. Furthermore, in the 1960s, a recreational center for local workers was built. In 1975–1982, Poręba was a district of Zawiercie. In 2008,

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

turtle remains were discovered in the area. System Identyfikacji Miejskiej w Porębie

Sports

The local football club is MKS Poręba. It competes in the lower leagues.

Cuisine

Prażonki is a traditional regional dish originating from Poręba. It is prepared from

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Un ...

es,

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the oni ...

kiełbasa Kielbasa (, ; from Polish ) is any type of meat sausage from Poland and a staple of Polish cuisine. In American English the word typically refers to a coarse, U-shaped smoked sausage of any kind of meat, which closely resembles the ''Wiejska'' ...

bacon Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork made from various cuts, typically the belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central ingredient (e.g., the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sa ...

lard Lard is a semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig.Lard
entry in the ...

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quanti ...

, pepper and cabbage. Other officially protected

traditional food Traditional foods are foods and dishes that are passed on through generations or which have been consumed for many generations. Traditional foods and dishes are traditional in nature, and may have a historic precedent in a national dish, regio ...

s from Poręba are ''kiełbasa porębska'', a local type of kiełbasa, and ''szynka wieprzowa parzona porębska'', a local type of

steamed Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. This is often done with a food steamer, a kitchen appliance made specifically to cook food with steam, but food can also be steamed in a wok. In the American southwest, steam pits used for cooking hav ...

ham Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term "ham ...

(as designated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland).

Twin towns – sister cities

Poręba is

twinned Twinning (making a twin of) may refer to: * In biology and agriculture, producing two offspring (i.e., twins) at a time, or having a tendency to do so; * Twin towns and sister cities, towns and cities involved in town twinning * Twinning inst ...

with: *

Kistelek Kistelek is a town in Csongrád county, in the Southern Great Plain region of southern Hungary. Geography It covers an area of and has a population of 7020 people (2012). Twin towns – sister cities Kistelek is twinned with: * Gerace, Italy ...

, Hungary *

Vynnyky Vynnyky ( uk, Ви́нники, , pl, Winniki) is a city in Lviv Raion, Lviv Oblast (region) of Ukraine. It belongs to Lviv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. As of 2021, its population was estimated to be . The city is part of Lych ...

, Ukraine

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Poreba Cities and towns in Silesian Voivodeship Zawiercie County Piotrków Governorate Kielce Voivodeship (1919–1939)