Tykocin ([tɨˈkɔt͡ɕin]; Yiddish: טיקטין, romanized: Tiktin) is a small town in north-eastern Poland, with 2,010 inhabitants (2012), located on the Narew river, in Białystok County in the Podlaskie Voivodeship.

Tykocin received its city rights from prince Janusz I of Warsaw in 1425, but several months later, the settlement was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (within the Polish-Lithuanian Union) by the Polish king Władysław II Jagiełło.

In the 1542, upon the death of Gostautai family's last member, the town was acquired by Polish king and Lithuanian Grand Prince Sigismund II Augustus[3] who had the medieval stronghold remodelled into a Renaissance castle.

[4][5] Most of Tykocin's landmarks was built in this era, including the Holy Trinity Church, monasteries of the Congregation of the Mission and the Bernardines, the former 17th-century military hospital, the synagogue and the statue of hetman Stefan Czarniecki.

[7] During the uprising, Tykocin was attacked by a Cossack unit led by Captain Dmitriyev, who forced the populace to sign a request to the tsarist administration to make him the town's military superior.

On 25–26 August 1941, the Jewish residents of Tykocin were assembled at the market square for "relocation", and then marched and trucked by the Nazis into the nearby Łopuchowo forest,[10][11] where they were executed in waves into pits by SS Einsatzkommando Zichenau-Schroettersburg under SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Schaper.