Description : Radziejów (German: Rädichau) is a town in Poland, in Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, about 45 km south of Toruń. It is the capital of Radziejów County. Its population is 5,804 (2004). The earliest known mention of Radziejów is found in a document from 1142, which states that it was given by the High Duchess consort of Poland Salomea of Berg to the monastery in Mogilno. Later it passed to the Diocese of Płock. In the second half of the 13th century it grew into a significant center of local administration. It was granted town rights in 1252 by Duke Casimir I of Kuyavia, confirmed in 1298 by future Polish King Władysław I Łokietek, who granted it Magdeburg Law. Kings Władysław I Łokietek and Władysław II Jagiełło vested it with new trade privileges and Sigismund I the Old established a weekly fair. Władysław I Łokietek founded the Franciscan monastery with the Gothic Church of the Feast of the Cross, one of the landmarks of the town. It was a royal town, located in the Brześć Kujawski Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown. The sejmiks for entire Kuyavia were held in Radziejów. The local royal castle was demolished by the Swedes in 1702, during the Great Northern War. In 1720 the first Piarist college of Poland was founded in Radziejów. It was moved to Włocławek in 1819.
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