Częstochowa

Częstochowa is a city in southern Poland on the Warta with 214,342 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship. However, Częstochowa is historically part of Lesser Poland, not Silesia, and before the 1795 Partition of Poland, it belonged to the Kraków Voivodeship. Częstochowa is located in the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland. It is the largest economic, cultural and administrative hub in the northern part of the Silesian Voivodeship. The city is known for the famous Jasna Góra Monastery of the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit of the Catholic Church, which is the home of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, a shrine to Mary, mother of Jesus. Every year, millions of pilgrims from all over the world come to Częstochowa to see it. Częstochowa was also home to Frankism in the late 18th and 19th centuries, an antinomian Sabbatean movement of Rabbinic Judaism that led to a mass conversion to Catholicism.