Poręba is a town in

Zawiercie County __NOTOC__ Zawiercie County () 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 government reforms passed in 1998. ...

Silesian Voivodeship Silesian Voivodeship ( ) is an administrative province in southern Poland. With over 4.2 million residents and an area of 12,300 square kilometers, it is the second-most populous, and the most-densely populated and most-urbanized region of Poland ...

, in southern

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, with 8,525 inhabitants (2019). The town has the area of . It also has a rail station on a line from

Miasteczko Śląskie Miasteczko Śląskie (originally Żyglińskie Góry ) is a small town in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. It borders the Metropolis GZM - a large metropolitan area with a population of over 2 million. It is located in the Silesian ...

Zawiercie Zawiercie () () is a town in southern 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 Sil ...

. 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'' (; ), is a historical region situated in southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków. Throughout centuries, Lesser Poland developed a separate cult ...

, and until 1795 (see

Partitions of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partition (politics), partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place between 1772 and 1795, toward the end of the 18th century. They ended the existence of the state, resulting in the eli ...

), it was part of the Kraków Voivodeship of the Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. 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 Polis ...

, it was annexed by

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, ...

. 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 supplied above atmospheric pressure. In a ...

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 (; ; ), also known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleonic Poland, was a First French Empire, French client state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars. It initially comprised the ethnical ...

, and in 1815, it became part of

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

-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 ...

, 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 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

, the settlement belonged to

Kielce Voivodeship Kielce Voivodeship () 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 the new Polish borders af ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, 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 (manufacturing), boring, grinding (abrasive cutting), grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some s ...

s. A

vocational school A vocational school (alternatively known as a trade school, or technical school), is a type of educational institution, which, depending on the country, may refer to either secondary education#List of tech ed skills, secondary or post-secondar ...

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 ( ; sometimes symbolized 🝈) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.5 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.4 Mya. The Triassic is t ...

turtle remains were discovered in the area.

Sports

The local

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

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 tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

es,

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' , from Latin ), 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 onion which was classifie ...

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

bacon Bacon is a type of Curing (food preservation), salt-cured pork made from various cuts of meat, cuts, typically the pork belly, belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central in ...

lard Lard is a Quasi-solid, semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering (animal products), rendering the adipose tissue, fatty tissue of a domestic pig, pig.

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

, pepper and

cabbage Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of '' Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.& ...

. Other officially protected

traditional food Traditional foods are foods and Dish (food), 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 ...

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 ha ...

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 '' ...

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

Twin towns – sister cities

Poręba is twinned with: *

Kistelek Kistelek is a town in Csongrad-Csanád county, in the Southern Great Plain region of southern Hungary. Geography It covers an area of and has a population of 7020 people (2012). History In the early Middle Ages, the town was a Cuman settlemen ...

, Hungary *

Vynnyky Vynnyky (, , ) is a small city in Lviv Raion, Lviv Oblast (region) of Ukraine. It belongs to Lviv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Its population was estimated to be History Since the mid-14th century, until the Partitions of Polan ...

, Ukraine

References

{{Zawiercie County Cities and towns in Silesian Voivodeship Zawiercie County