Olecko (Oletzko, Margrabowa, Marggrabowa, Treuburg) is situated in the eastern part of Mazovia. The commune covers an area of 26,660 ha, inhabited by 21,500 people, 17,000 of which live in the town. Adiministrative 27 village areas and 43 places enter into the composition of the commune.

  Here cross important communication routes leading among others to border passages to Russia and Lithuania. Distances from Olecko to some selected towns: Gizycko - 56 km, Elk - 30 km, Suwalki - 35 km, Goldap - 37 km, Warsaw - 267 km, Bialystok - 135 km, Olsztyn - 161. The nearest road border passages are: in Goldap - to the Kaliningrad District and in Ogrodniki and Budzisko - at the border with Lithuania. All these features qualify the town as an attractive touristic and recreation centre and a place for economical investments. The town's offer here is particularly rich, since it contains both the grounds with full territorial development and also buildings ready to management.

THE TOWN'S HISTORY The majority of the settlements on the grounds of the Olecko District appeared in XVI century, under prince Albert Hohenzollern, who founded the first townin this part of Prince's Prussia in 1560. It was called Margrabowo (from Albrecht's title - the margrave of Brandenburg) and had the biggest market of all Prussian towns (over 5,5 ha), as important trade centre on Polish - Lithuanian border line. The town's development was set back by natural calamities such as fires, epidemics and war damage. They caused material losses, considerable population decrease among people of Polish origin and nearly complete destruction of historical evidence in the shape of monuments of architecture. From among all that painful blows and turnmoils of history inhabitants of Olecko and the neighbourhood felt the most acutely the Tatar invasion in 1656-1657, the plague which caused the death of about 11 thousand people on the ground of the then Olecko Starosty in 1709-1711, and both World Wars. As a border district, Olecko and the nearest region was the scene of bloody fights in 1914-1915, whose traces have remained here in the shape of monuments of the dead and numerous military cemeteries. Direct neighbourhood of native Polish lands for many years resulted in Polish character of Olecko District. From Olecko came protests against germanization activities in Mazovia. In 1659 was born Jan Moneta - a lector of Polish at academic grammar-school in Gdansk. In 1790 in Wojnasy near Olecko was born Krystyn Lach Szyrma - a writer and a scholar, a philosophy professor at Warsaw University. In 1820-1837 a parson A. F. Czygan - a founder and editor of the paper "News about Spreading of Christian Faith" - lived and worked in Olecko. In 1836 he presided the synod of Mazovian parsons in Olecko, where they voted against removing the Polish language from schools in Mazovia. In 1856 was born Jan Karol Sembrzycki - an editor of newspapers for Polish people: "Mazur" and "East-Prussian Mazur", a publisher of calendars and a person actively engaged in educational work. For a few centuries in Olecko District considerably predominated Polish people of evangelic confession. Just the day before the First World War the mother tongue of at least a half of the inhabitants was Polish. But this attachment to their own language and native homelines was not accompanied by the sense of national consciousness. A plebiscite in Olecko in 1920 was a catastrophic failure. Only two votes were given for Poland. For commemoration of the victory in the plebiscite the Germans gave the town a new name - Treuburg - which in 1933 was spread on the whole district, till then called Olecko (Kreis Oletzko). From the seventies of XIX century Olecko underwent positive transformatiion connected with consequences of civilization advancement. It gained railway connection with the world, and got new municipal and service appliances: a gas plant, a power plant, water-supply service, a sewage system, a slaughter house and a cold storage plant. Housing was developed, new schools and public services appeared. Particularly a great deal was done for increasing the charm of the town's natural location in the picturesque terrain among lakes and forests in the upland part of Mazovia. Today almost 17 thousand people live in Olecko. Former state border, running a dozen kilometers or so to the East from the town, does not separate Olecko District from the Suwalsko-Augustowskie Lake District, which makes its natural extension.

CULTURE Mazury Garbate is one of the most beautiful parts of our country, whrer lakes bodrer on hillocks, and wonderful, often chaste vegetation. Maybe then this diversified nature inspires "restless minds" to create and act. Thanks to this Olecko can boast rich cultural tradition, which it is trying to come up nowadays. Olecko has meant poetry and theatre for many years. It all began from the Poetry Theatre "Meluzyna", run successfully by Stanislaw Miedziewski for dozen years. In the same black year when "Meluzyna" was dissolved, Marek Galazka appeared in Olecko and a few months later initiated the activity of AGT Theatre with the performance "Wedrowanie". The next years of his activity resulted in a number of successes on theatre reviews and festivals. AGT group was also the initiator of Meetings with Unprofesional Theatre "SZTAMA". The festival has been organized in Olecko since 1979 and is still very popular with participants and spectators. Thanks to "SZTAMA" the audience in Olecko had a chance to see the best performances of many outstanding alternative theatres. Marek Galazka is not only the AGT leader, but also the creator and main character of the ballad group "Po drodze", which has brought up a generation of the young - listening to and feeling poetry - on its Stachura's singing. Poetry was a frequent visitor in our town. The best evidence are Olecko Poetry Junes, a paper "Legary", Waclaw Klejmont's satiric output.
Also the motto of the summer undertaking by Olecko Culture Centre - [Przystanek Olecko] "Olecko Exposure", which sounds: "There will be enough room for all under the big roof of the sky...", speaks volumes for it. The inspiration for organizers was the serial "Northern Exposure". It became one day a phenomenon of a cult and its audience founded the Informal Association of "Northern Exposure" Fans. The film's central idea, telling about common people, about simple, but not deprived of deep search existence, about tolerance, the attempt of mutual understanding and acceptance, became the keynote of multigeneration meeting, for which about 1,5 thousand people came from the whole Poland. "Exposure" differs from other summer entertainments in its wide formula including recreation, sport, ecological, integrative and art activities (containing creative workshops, as well as concerts, performances and happenings). Thanks to that in the last week of July everybody can find here something adequate for his sensibility.

The Mazury Folklore Meetings are a festival organised and coordinated by Bożena Gałązka and Zbigniew Darda from the Mazury Garbate Regional Cultural Centre in Olecko. The festival meetings, which began in 1998, are defined as the openness towards the multinational and multicultural inhabitants of the Mazury and Suwalszczyzna regions in Poland. The festival events have often been financed from the European Union funds.
The mains aim of the Mazury Folklore Meetings are to show the wealth of the folk culture in its multinational aspect and also to integrate through artistic activities and interpersonal contacts. Getting to know European nations serves as a way to mutual understanding and tolerance of all the groups taking part in the project.