Map - Chełm

Chełm (Холм; Cholm; כעלם) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some 25 km from the border with Ukraine. Chełm used to be the capital of the Chełm Voivodeship until it became part of the Lublin Voivodeship in 1999.

The city is of mostly industrial character, though it also features numerous notable historical monuments and tourist attractions in the Old Town. Chełm is a multiple (former) bishopric. Its name comes from the Proto-Slavic or Celtic word "cholm", a hill, in reference to the Wysoka Górka fortified settlement. Chełm was once a vibrant multicultural and religious centre populated by Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Protestants and Jews. The population was homogenized after World War II.

The first traces of settlement in the area of modern Chełm date back to at the least 9th century. The following century, a fortified town was created and initially served as a centre of pagan worship. The etymology of the name is unclear, though most scholars derive it from the Proto-Slavic noun denoting a flat hill. The town's centre is located on a hill called góra chełmska. However, it is also theorized that the name is derived from some Celtic root. In 981 the town, then inhabited by the Slavic tribe of Buzhans, was conquered by Kievan Rus', along with the surrounding Cherven Towns. According to a local legend, Vladimir the Great built the first stone castle there in 1001. Following the Polish capture of Kiev in 1018, the region returned to Poland before it fell back to Kievan rule in 1031.

In 1235, Danylo Romanovych of Halych granted the town a city charter and moved the capital of his domain in 1241–1272 after destruction of Halych by Mongols in 1240–1241. Danylo also built a new castle atop the hill in 1237, one of the few Ruthenian castles that withstood Mongol attacks, and established an Orthodox eparchy (diocese) centered at the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary. Until the 14th century, the town developed as part of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia and then as part of the short-lived Princedom of Chełm and Belz (see Duchy of Belz). In 1366, king Casimir III the Great of Poland took control of the region after his victory in the Galicia–Volhynia Wars. On 4 January 1392, the town was relocated and granted rights under Magdeburg Law, with vast internal autonomy and the town saw an influx of Polish and other Catholic settlers.

A Latin Rite Catholic diocese of Chełm was created in 1359, but its seat was moved to Krasnystaw after 1480. Renamed as Diocese of Chełm–Lublin in 1790, it was suppressed in 1805, but since 2005 Chełm is nominally restored and listed by the Catholic Church as Latin titular bishopric.

The Orthodox bishopric entered communion with the see of Rome in the late 16th century as Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Chełm–Bełz, retaining its Byzantine Rite, but in 1867 it became part of the imperial Russian Orthodox Church, and is now the Archdiocese of Lublin and Chełm of the Polish Orthodox Church.

The town was the capital of a historical region of the Land of Chełm, administratively a part of the Ruthenian Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown. The city prospered in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was then that The Golem of Chełm by Rabbi Elijah Ba'al Shem of Chelm became famous, but the city declined in the 17th century due to the wars which ravaged Poland. In the 18th century, the situation in eastern Poland stabilized and the town started to slowly recover from the damages suffered during the Swedish Deluge and the Khmelnytsky uprising. It attracted a number of new settlers from all parts of Poland, including people of Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish faiths. In 1794, the Chełm Voivodeship was established. Chełm was one of the first towns to join the Kościuszko's Uprising later that year. In the Battle of Chełm of 8 June 1794, the forces of Gen. Józef Zajączek were defeated by the Russians under Valerian Zubov and Boris Lacy, the town was yet again sacked by the invading armies. The following year, as a result of the Third Partition of Poland, the town was annexed by Austria.