Mstów, Silesian Voivodeship
Mstów (Yiddish: Amstov – אמסטאוו) is a village in Częstochowa County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of an administrative district called Gmina Mstów. It lies approximately east of Częstochowa and north of the regional capital Katowice. Mstów lies on the Warta river, in western part of historic province of Lesser Poland. The village is known for its fortified Roman Catholic monastery. History Mstów was first mentioned as Mstowo in 1193, when it belonged to the congregation of Canons Regular of the Lateran from Wrocław. Sometime in the early 13th century, a large monastery was built here. It burned in a great fire of 1566, then the complex was rebuilt and destroyed several times. More destruction came during World War I, when several German-Russian skirmishes took place here in early stages of the conflict. During those fights, the towers and defensive walls of the ancient church were destroyed, as well as the roof of the nave. The complex was gradually rebuilt in the 1920s and 1930s. In the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, fields around the monastery were used by Lesser Poland's nobility for its sejmiks (local councils). Among notable guests of Mstów was Queen