City county in Podlaskie Voivodeship, Poland
About Białystok
Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area.
Etymology
Although nowadays "stok" is translated as "slope", the initial name of the settlement came from the river flowing through it. In old Polish, biały stok was white river (biały - white, stok - stream; river that "slides" down the slope). Inconspicuous today, the Biała River (usually called Białka), flowing through the city center, gave it its name. Due to changing borders and demographics over the centuries, the city has been known as Belarusian: Беласток (Byelastok?, Biełastok? [bʲeɫaˈstok]), Yiddish: ביאַליסטאָק (Byalistok, Bjalistok), Lithuanian: Balstogė, and Russian: Белосток (Belostok, Byelostok).
History
Archaeological discoveries show that the first settlements in the area of present-day Białystok occurred during the Stone Age. Tombs of ancient settlers can be found in the district of Dojlidy. In the early Iron Age, people settled in the area producing kurgans, the tombs of the chiefs in the area located in the current village of Rostołty. Since then, the Białystok area has been at the crossroads of cultures. Trade routes linking the Baltic to the Black Sea favored the development of settlements with Yotvingia-Ruthenian-Polish cultural characteristics. Surviving documents attest that around 1437 a representative of the Raczków family, Jakub Tabutowicz of the coat of arms Łabędź, received from Michael Žygimantaitis, son of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund Kęstutaitis, a wilderness area along the river Biała that marked the beginning of Białystok as a settlement. …
Geography
Białystok is situated in the Białystok Uplands (Polish: Wysoczyzna Białostocka) of the Podlaskie Plain (Polish: Nizina Północnopodlaska), part of what is known collectively as the Green Lungs of Poland. It is situated 197 kilometres (122 mi) by road northeast of Warsaw. It is the biggest Polish city close to Belarus and Lithuania. The Biała River, a left tributary of the Supraśl River, passes through the city. The landscape of the Białystok Upland is diverse, with high moraine hills and kame in excess of 200 m (660 ft) above sea level. Vast areas of outwash, a glacial plain formed of sediments deposited by meltwater at the terminus of a glacier, are covered by forests. The highest point of the city lies at a height of 175 m (574 ft) on the Pietrasze Forest. The lowest point lies at a height of 118 m (387 ft) on the river valley of the Biała. …
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