Choszczno lies on Lake Klukom, in the Choszczno Lakeland, and according to Wikipedia it was a walled town from the 14th century. Little remains today of those fortifications, of the Gothic parish church and of the legends about the founder, because in 1945 almost the whole town burned down. What remains, however, are walls that can be walked around and a bas-relief that Wikipedia describes as a rarity on a European scale.

Walls, towers and gates of the 14th and 15th centuries

According to Wikipedia, at the town's height in the 14th and 15th centuries the defences of Choszczno consisted of stone-and-brick walls, 36 wall-walk turrets, 5 defensive towers and 3 gates: the High (Wysoka), Mill (Młyńska) and Stone (Kamienna) gates. In the market square stood a parish church with a cemetery, a town hall, a trading house, stalls and butchers' stalls, and the streets formed a plan of four main streets with cross streets.

In its list of monuments Wikipedia notes that only small fragments of the walls have survived to this day. More than half of the north wall still exists, and of the south and west walls isolated sections survive, along Lipcowa, Bohaterów Warszawy and Mur Południowy streets. An earthen rampart, formerly called the Monks' Rampart (Mnisi wał), also survives. According to the same entry, the barbican of the Stone Gate, a rondel forecourt from the 14th and 15th centuries on Wolności Street, now houses the seat of the Town Council. Wikipedia does not give the total length of the walls, so that figure is not given here.

The parish church with the Tree of Jesse

By the market square stands the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to the parish website, in the 13th century a Romanesque church stood here, built by the Cistercians of Kołbacz after they received these lands from Duke Władysław Odonic in 1232-1233. In 1309 the town church was taken over by the Knights Hospitaller, and according to the parish it was they who built today's Gothic church in the first half of the 14th century, with the tower completed around 1400. In 1636, during the Thirty Years' War, the church burned down, and in 1859-1862 Emil Karl Flaminius carried out its neo-Gothic rebuilding.

According to Wikipedia, the most valuable monument in the interior is the Tree of Jesse, a ceramic bas-relief showing the genealogy of Christ, dated to around 1350. In the centre is the crucified Christ with Mary and St John, and at the sides are 21 figures of Christ's ancestors. Wikipedia says that the Tree of Jesse in Choszczno is a rarity on a European scale, while the parish website calls it a unique object on a national and even European scale, because of the form of the bas-relief. These are the assessments of those two sources, not the result of a comparison with other monuments.

Where the bas-relief came from, the sources do not settle unambiguously. According to Janina Kochanowska, whom Wikipedia quotes, it was made in the 14th century for a Franciscan monastery that no longer exists, and after two fires in the 17th century it ended up on the outer wall of the parish church. It was moved to the interior in the middle of the 19th century, during renovation. The same Wikipedia allows that it may come from the Cistercian monastery in Bierzwnik. Today the bas-relief is in a niche on the south wall of the chancel.

1945 and rebuilding

According to Wikipedia, Choszczno was captured by Soviet troops on 23 February 1945. 1,345 buildings were destroyed, which was 83 per cent of the built-up area, and the old town was almost completely destroyed. The rebuilding of the town lasted until the 1960s. The parish church fared similarly: in February 1945 the roofs disappeared, the vaults collapsed and the furnishings burned. The chancel was reconsecrated on 8 December 1947, the nave was rebuilt in 1956-1957 to a design by Paweł Sznel, and the whole church was solemnly consecrated on 8 December 1975.

The memory of the pre-war town is gathered by the Choszczno Land Museum. According to Wikipedia, the first efforts to set up a museum in Choszczno go back to 1925, and the present institution was founded in 1995 and since 1998 has been housed in the building of School Complex No. 1. Its collections include archaeological finds from prehistory to the 20th century, weapons, ceramics, coins, seals and photographs.

The warrior Choszcz and the seven lime trees

Choszczno also has its own legends. According to Wikipedia, the legendary founder of the town was the warrior Choszcz, from whom it was said to take its name, and his wooden sculpture of 1984, carved by Zbigniew Tracz, was placed on the Partnership Roundabout. This is a tradition, not something established by historians. Another legend, quoted in the same entry, tells of seven lime trees that once grew on a hillock at the crossing of Piastowska and Władysława Jagiełły streets, which were called the lime trees of the seven brothers. The fused small-leaved limes growing there today have, according to Wikipedia, girths of 760 and 460 centimetres and a height of 22 metres, and are natural monuments.