Koszalin (Polish: [kɔˈʂalin] ⓘ; Kashubian: Kòszalëno; German: Köslin,[2] pronounced [kœsˈliːn]) is a city in northwestern Poland, in Western Pomerania.

Various traces of human settlement of the Funnelbeaker, Globular Amphora and Lusatian cultures and from ancient Roman times and Early Middle Ages were discovered during archaeological excavations.

In 1214, Bogislaw II, Duke of Pomerania, made a donation of a village known as Koszalice/Cossalitz by Chełmska Hill in Kołobrzeg Land to the Norbertine monastery in Białoboki near Trzebiatów.

In 1248, the eastern part of Kołobrzeg Land, including the village, was transferred by Duke Barnim I to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kammin.

Thence, it participated in the Baltic Sea trade as a member of the Hanseatic League (from 1386),[7] which led to several conflicts with the competing seaports of at Kołobrzeg and Darłowo.

Occupied by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War in 1637, some of the city's inhabitants sought refuge in nearby Poland.

Now renamed Cöslin as part of the Kingdom of Prussia, the city was heavily damaged by a fire in 1718, but was rebuilt in the following years.

Following the Napoleonic wars, it became the capital of Fürstenthum District (county) and Regierungsbezirk Cöslin (government region) within the Province of Pomerania.

[7] Part of this road, from Cöslin (Koszalin) to the nearby town of Sianów, was built in 1833 by around one hundred former Polish insurgents.

[9] During the Second World War Köslin was the site of the first school for the "rocket troops" created on orders of Walter Dornberger, the Wehrmacht's head of the V-2 design and development program.

[11][12] The Nazis brought many prisoners of war and forced labourers to the city, mainly Poles, but also Italians and French.

The city's German population that had not yet fled was expelled to the remainder of post-war Germany in accordance to the Potsdam Agreement.

[17] As early as March 1945 a Polish police unit was established, consisting of former forced labourers and prisoners of war, however, the Soviets, still present in the city, plundered local industrial factories in April.

[18] In 1946, the first public library was opened, whose director was later Maria Pilecka, the sister of Polish national hero Witold Pilecki.

[18] In July 1947, the last units of the Soviet Army left Koszalin, and from that time only Polish troops were stationed in the city.

At the entrance to the sanctuary there is a monument dedicated to the Polish November insurgents of 1831, who, imprisoned by Prussian authorities, built a road connecting Koszalin with nearby Sianów.

The summers are warm and practically never hot as in the south and the winters are often more moderate than the northeast and east, although still cold, yet it is not as mild as Western Europe.