Pierzchnica

Pierzchnica is a town in Kielce County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) of Gmina Pierzchnica. It lies in historic Lesser Poland, approximately south-east of the regional capital Kielce.

==History== In the late Middle Ages, Pierzchnica was a royal village, first mentioned in documents from 1336. It is not known when it was granted a town charter – it happened between 1359 and 1397, during the reign of either Casimir III the Great or Władysław II Jagiełło. The name of the town was spelled as either Pyrzsznycza or Pyersnicza (1579). According to Jan Długosz, the town remained a royal property, with its wooden church. In 1497, King Jan Olbracht allowed Pierzchnica to organize markets on every Tuesday. In 1512, the Magdeburg rights town charter for Pierzchnica was confirmed, after the original document had burned in a fire. It was a royal town of the Kingdom of Poland, administratively located in the Wiślica County in the Sandomierz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province. Nevertheless, Pierzchnica remained a small and poor town, with 50 houses in 1621, much smaller than Szydlow. Furthermore, it was burned to the ground during the Swedish invasion of Poland (1656).