Cathedral at Gniezno, where Poland's first Roman Catholic archbishopric was established circa A.D. 1000.
Courtesy Ronald D. Bachman

In the first centuries of its existence, the Polish nation was led by a series of strong rulers who converted the Poles to Christendom, created a strong Central European state, and integrated Poland into European culture. Formidable foreign enemies and internal fragmentation eroded this initial structure in the thirteenth century, but consolidation in the 1300s laid the base for the dominant Polish Kingdom that was to follow.

Data as of October 1992