The Wągrowiec municipal area boasts a rare attraction: two rivers, the Nielba and Wełna cross there, without commingling.

It was a private church town, administratively located in the Kcynia County in the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown.

[2] At the end of the 14th century, King Władysław II Jagiello gave the city the privileges of market and fair, and in 1396 the Cistercian monastery was moved in.

Initially a part of the newly created province of South Prussia, it was in 1807 transferred to the Duchy of Warsaw, a state allied to the Napoleonic France.

After Napoleon's defeat and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Wągrowiec was again annexed by Prussia; this time it was made a part of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Poznań.

[5] Polish inhabitants of Wągrowiec formed an insurgent unit, led by Włodzimierz Kowalski, a teacher from the nearby village of Czerlin, which fought in various battles in northern Greater Poland in 1919.

[6] Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the end of the invasion of Poland, which started World War II in 1939, the town was annexed by Nazi Germany.

[9] Many Polish inhabitants were expelled to the more easterly areas of German-occupied Poland (General Government) as part of the implementation of Lebensraum policies.

In August 1944, the Germans carried out mass arrests of local members of the Home Army, the leading Polish underground resistance organization.

Two private universities opened branches in Wągrowiec, Gnieźnieńska Szkoła Wyższa Milenium[13] and Poznańska Akademia Medyczna Nauk Stosowanych im.