Pleszew

Pleszew (; ) is a town in central Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship, about 90 km southeast of Poznań. It is the capital of Pleszew County. The town's population is 16,811 (2022). The town is claimed to be a 15-minute city.

==History== thumb|left|Guild document from Pleszew from 1630 The oldest permanent human settlements in the present-day Pleszew and its surroundings date back to the 9th century BC. The oldest known mention of Pleszew, already as a town, comes from a 1283 document of - in the document of Duke and future King of Poland Przemysł II of the Piast dynasty. In the following centuries it was a private town owned by Polish nobility, located in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown. King John I Albert in the privilege of 1493 permitted the organization of two weekly markets and two annual fairs. In the early 16th century, there were nine craft guilds in the town. Pleszew was a local center of Reformation. In the 18th century, one of two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through Pleszew and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland traveled that route numerous times. The 1st Polish Infantry Regiment was stationed in the town in 1792 before it was relocated to Parczew. thumb|left|upright|Polish insurgents place the coat of arms of Poland on the town hall in liberated Pleszew, January 1919 During the Second Partition of Poland, in 1793, Pleszew was annexed by Prussia. After the successful Greater Poland uprising of 1806, it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, before it was re-annexed by Prussia in 1815. It was an important center of the unsuccessful Polish Greater Poland uprising (1848). In the following decades, to resist Germanisation, Poles founded various organizations, including agricultural, industrial and educational societies, the Cooperative Bank (Bank Spółdzielczy), a printing house, scout troops and a local branch of the "Sokół" Polish Gymnastic Society. In the second half of the 19th century, new industrial factories were established.