# Europe Forum > Travelling & Living in Europe >  Which is the largest "village" and the smallest "town" in your country?

## Tomenable

The largest village in Poland is Kozy with 13,000 inhabitants (but only up to 0.1% of all villages have >5,000, 1.3% have between 2,000 and 5,000), while the smallest town in Poland is Wiślica with just 500 inhabitants (the 2nd smallest has >900 and generally in order to be eligible for town status, a settlement must have >2,000 but there are exceptions, especially based on history).


Kozy, the largest village in Poland:






Ochotnica, the longest (25 km) village:






Wiślica the smallest town in Poland:

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## Coriolan

How do you define a town vs a village?

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## Tomenable

> How do you define a town vs a village?


For example, differences in legal status. Towns have a town charter (borough rights):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_charter

Historically there were also differences in spatial organization (towns had a market square with a town hall, villages didn't, etc.) and occupational profile of inhabitants (villages had mostly agrarian population, towns had a non-agrarian core). In the Early Middle Ages town charters had not yet been invented, but of course we can still distinguish towns from villages in those times based on practical differences (like towns have been defined as towns since they first emerged in Ancient Mesopotamia). 

Wiślica is among the oldest towns in Poland. See the map on page 225 (256/541 PDF):

https://brego-weard.com/lib/ns/The_A...and_Discov.pdf

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## Tomenable

Wiślica used to be fortified, it had stone walls, despite being a small town (though not as small as today - it had more inhabitants in the Middle Ages than today). However, having walls is not a required condition for a settlement to be a town. "Open towns" without fortifications (either stone, brick or wooden) also existed. Fortified villages also existed, although rarer and usually with walls and ramparts made of wood and ground.

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