Owińska lies close to the Warta river, on the main road and railway line from Poznań to Wągrowiec.

In the village are a former Cistercian convent (now a school for the blind), a Renaissance church, and a palace built in late classical style (1804–1806).

[2] Owińska was the location of a mental hospital where approximately 1,000 patients were murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II.

In the second stage of the same "aktion" conducted after October 26, 1939, the remaining patients were taken to a bunker in Fort VII and gassed with carbon monoxide released from steel bottles.

[3] From August 1943 to January 1945 the Germans operated a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in the village, whose prisoners were mostly Poles and Russians.