Skalmierzyce is an urbanized

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

Ostrów Wielkopolski County Ostrów (Polish for "river island") may refer to: Places Poland ; Greater Poland Voivodeship * Ostrów Wielkopolski, a town in Greater Poland Voivodeship (west-central Poland) * Ostrów, Greater Poland Voivodeship in Greater Poland Voivodeship ...

Greater Poland Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship ( ) is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship, or province, in west-central Poland. The province is named after the region called Greater Poland (''Wielkopolska'' ). The modern province includes most of this historic re ...

, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately east of

Ostrów Wielkopolski Ostrów Wielkopolski () (often abbreviated ''Ostrów Wlkp.'', formerly called simply ''Ostrów'', , Latin: ''Ostrovia'') is a city in west-central Poland with 70,982 inhabitants (2021), situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship; the seat of Ostr ...

and south-east of the regional capital

Poznań Poznań ( ) is a city on the Warta, River Warta in west Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business center and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John's ...

. It adjoins the town of Nowe Skalmierzyce. Skalmierzyce has a population of around 4,000. It is the administrative seat of the

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,479 gminy throughout the country, encompassing over 43,000 villages. 940 gminy include cities and tow ...

(administrative district) called

Gmina Nowe Skalmierzyce __NOTOC__ Gmina Nowe Skalmierzyce is an urban-rural gmina (administrative district) in Ostrów Wielkopolski County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. In 1999 the administrative seat of the gmina was moved from the town of Nowe Sk ...

. It is the only village in Poland to be the seat of a gmina containing a town (until 2009 it shared that status with

Święta Katarzyna, Lower Silesian Voivodeship Święta Katarzyna (, , ), , is a village in Gmina Siechnice, Wrocław County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Before 1 January 2010, the district of Gmina Siechnice was called ''Gmina Święta Katarzyna'', and Święta Kata ...

). In local speech it is often called ''Stare Skalmierzyce'' ("Old Skalmierzyce"), to distinguish it from Nowe Skalmierzyce ("New Skalmierzyce"). It was originally called Scarbimirzyce, and is first mentioned in 1343. In 1815 it found itself close to the border between

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

and Russian-controlled

Congress Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of 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 was established w ...

; a customs post was set up close by, which later developed into Nowe Skalmierzyce. Buildings of interest include St. Catherine's church, built 1791–1792 and extended in 1873.

Famous people born in Skalmierzyce

* Dr. Gunther von Hagens (born 'Gunther Liebchen', 10 January 1945), pioneering

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

who invented the technique for preserving biological tissue specimens called

plastination Plastination is a technique or process used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts, first developed by Gunther von Hagens in 1977. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or ...

References

Villages in Ostrów Wielkopolski County {{OstrówWielkopolski-geo-stub