Acounty (Polish:powiat, pronounced "povyat"; plural,powiaty) is thePolish second-level unit ofadministration, equivalent to acounty,district orprefecture in other countries. A county is part of a larger unit called a "voivodship" (inPolish,województwo. One would call it in English "province").
Most Polish counties are named after their capital city, orcounty seat. If a county seat has a double-barreled name, as with "Maków Mazowiecki," the county may become either "Maków County" or "Maków-Mazowiecki County." Due, in all but the first case, to the existence, respectively, of two "double-barreled" county seats with the identicalnoun name, the correspondingadjectives "bielski," "grodziski," "ostrowski" and "tomaszowski" each denotetwo distinct counties.
Some Polish urban communes constitute administrative entities called the "urban county" (powiat grodzki), similar in local administration and self-governance to "land counties." An average county (the largest being thepowiat of Białystok) comprises 5 – 8 communes. The largest urban county, in terms of population and area, is the city ofWarsaw.
The history of Polish counties goes back to the second half of the14th century. They remained the basic units of territorial organization in Poland, then in thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the latter's total dismemberment by its neighbors in1795.
In the19th century, the county continued to function in the part of Poland that had been incorporated into theRussian Empire ("Congress Poland"), and as the Polish equivalent of theGerman "Kreis" in the German-governedGrand Duchy of Poznań.
After Poland regained independence in1918, the county again became the basic territorial unit throughoutPoland.Powiats (counties) were abolished in1975 in favor of a larger number ofvoivodships, but were reintroduced in1999. There are now 314 "land counties" (powiat ziemski) and 65 "urban counties" (powiat grodzki), more formally "municipalities with county status" (miasto na prawach powiatu).
