Ełk
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Welcome in Ełk - a town which has been
steadily expanding for six centuries along the banks of
The year 1999 will open a new chapter in the history of the town. On the
8 of June, Pope John Paul II shall celebrate Holy Mass in Ełk
during his visit to
According to the new administrative division, Ełk
now belongs to the Warmia and
Ełk is a
business-oriented, modern, and dynamically developing town. Tourists will find
that Ełk and the Ełk Lake
District are as attractive as other, larger holiday resorts in
Thank you for your interest in our town; please accept our sincere
invitation to the charming countryside of the Ełk
Lake District.
SOME HISTORY
The present-day region of Ełk belonged in the
early Middle Ages to the lands of the little-known Jaćwing tribe. The Jaćwings were
the first to build a fort on the island on
The first to mention the name of Łek was
chronicler Jan Długosz. The name of the village was
taken from the name of the river on which it had been founded. The modern form,
Ełk, comes from the locative of the name: we Łku (in Łek) changed over the
years into w Ełku (in Ełk).
The founder and first bailiff of Ełk was Bartosz Bratomil. Thanks to its
advantageous location, Ełk developed rapidly and it
soon received civic rights from the Grand Master Paul von Russdorf.
The date of receiving civic rights is not quite clear. It was either 1435 or
1445. This is why 1425, the date of founding of the village, is often used by
historians instead. After the Thirteen Year War, the region was further
colonized. In 1499, Ełk had about 600 inhabitants.
The first parish was created in 1469.
The period of the blossoming of Ełk was the
16th century. In 1536, Jan z Sącza called Małecki arrived in Ełk. He was a
printer and published books in the Polish language. In 1599, the school existing
in Ełk
became a ducal school. In the
years 1547-51, St. Catherine’s, the parish church, was rebuilt. The town
hospital was built roughly in the same period. The town continued to expand
thanks to Duke Albrecht’s charter from 1560 allowing Ełk
to hold weekly markets.
Later, Ełk was the victim of many misfortunes:
in 1625, it was attacked by the plague; in 1651, there was a great fire; in
1655, the Tartars burnt down the town and murdered the populace. Another huge
fire, in 1688, was a great step backwards in the process of rebuilding the
town. Ełk had entered a period of stagnation.
The more important events of the 18th century were the founding of the
town school in 1720 and the founding of the first pharmacy in 1754.
In 1800, the first teacher’s college was founded. It was organized and
directed by the Ełk archpresbyter,
Tymoteusz Gizewiusz, who
was a great scholar of the Polish language.
The first half of the 19th century was not auspicious for the town.
Several great fires destroyed all the monuments of architecture from the
previous centuries; this is why today Ełk makes the
impression of being a 19th-century town. In 1868, the Ełk-Królewiec
railway line was opened. The years of the I World War brought about further
destruction of the town; Ełk found itself on the
front-line. It was captured three times by the Russians. The center of town was
totally destroyed by bombs.