Mikulov (German Nikolsburg, Yiddish ניקאלשבורג Niklšburg, Hebrew מיקולוב) is a town in the district of Břeclav in the South Moravian Region, 18 km west of Břeclav on the border with Austria. Approximately 7,500 inhabitants live here. The historic core is a city monument reserve. The Mikulov wine-growing sub-region is named after the town.
Buildings and objects
Dietrichstein tomb
Gothic prismatic city
tower
Chapel of St. Sebastian
Church of St. Wenceslas
Stations
of the Cross and Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre
Giant Barrel (Mikulov)
A line of Czechoslovak fortifications with an infantry blockhouse MJ-S
29, which was built to protect against Nazi Germany.
Early Baroque
Piarist monastery with the church of St. John the Baptist from 1666–1689
Column of the Holy Trinity by Ignác Lengelacher from 1724.
Synagogue
in Mikulov
The tower on Kozí vrch
Mikulov Castle
Castle garden
from 1691
Jewish quarter
Jewish cemetery
Natural monuments
and reserves
The town of Mikulov is located in the protected
landscape area of Pálava, whose administration is located there. There
are many natural monuments around the city, such as:
Na Turold
cave
Svátý kopeček nature reserve
Turold Nature Reserve
Růžový
vrch nature reserve
Šibeničník nature reserve
Natural monument
Kočičí kámen
Natural monument Kočičí skála
The origin of Mikulov is usually placed at the beginning of the
12th century, when a market settlement was founded here, which was
elevated to a small town in 1279 and to a city in 1410. A castle was
built in the 17th century on the site of a Romanesque and later
Gothic castle. Mikulov was in the possession of the Liechtenstein
family from the end of the 13th to the end of the 16th century, then
it belonged to the Dietrichstein family until the 19th century, who
owned the castle and the estate until 1945, when the castle also
burned down.
In the castle here, after the Battle of Slavkov,
the preliminary terms of peace between France and Austria were
negotiated (December 2, 1805). And 61 years later, after the defeat
of the Austrian troops in the Battle of Sadová, on July 26, 1866,
they signed an armistice between Austria and Prussia, the so-called
Armistice of Mikulov.
Since the middle of the 19th century,
due to its location outside the main railways, Mikulov stagnated and
began to lose its influence in favor of the nearby and more
advantageously located Břeclav. After World War II, the largely
German city was displaced and the population reached pre-war levels
during the 1970s.
Until 1960, Mikulov was a district town,
then as a result of the new division of the state, the Mikulov
district became part of the Břeclav district. In the years
1980–1990, the now separate municipalities of Bavory and Klentnice
were part of the city. After the abolition of the district
authorities, on January 1, 2003, Mikulov received the status of a
municipality with extended jurisdiction, whose municipal authority
took over some tasks of the abolished district authority for the
surrounding municipalities.
The beginnings of the Mikulov Jewish community date back to the
period after 1421, when the Jews were expelled from Vienna and Lower
Austria by the Austrian Duke Albrecht V. Some of these refugees found
refuge in Mikulov, which was close to the border. Another influx
occurred during the reign of Albrecht's son Ladislav Pohrobek, who
expelled the Jews from the Moravian royal cities.
These exiles,
despised in the Middle Ages, began to settle in the local sub-castle,
where an independent Jewish quarter eventually emerged, which in 1591
gained self-government with its own mayor and other privileges. The
Mikulov Jewish community gradually grew and gained in importance until
it finally became one of the most important in Moravia. This was also
the reason why Mikulov became the seat of the Moravian regional rabbis
in the first half of the 16th century, who lived there until 1851. This
made the city the cultural center of Moravian Jewry. One of the world's
most famous rabbis, Yehuda Löw (1525–1609), worked here as the second
regional rabbi in the order in the years 1553–1573, followed by the no
less famous Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, David Oppenheimer, Shmu'el Šmelke
Horovic, Mordechai Benet or Samson Raphael Hirsch.
The life of
the local Jewish community was marked by several large fires. On August
10, 1719, an extensive fire destroyed the entire Jewish quarter. After
the ghetto was rebuilt, another fire disaster came in April 1737. In the
first half of the 18th century, 600 Jewish families lived in Mikulov,
and the local Jewish community was the largest in Moravia (almost 10% of
Moravian Jews lived here). In the first half of the 19th century, Jews
made up almost half of the city's population, but after gaining full
civil equality in 1848, they began moving to large cities, especially to
Brno and Vienna, where they had better economic conditions.
In
1851, the functions of Mikulov rabbi and Moravian regional rabbi were
divided. The following rabbis worked in Mikulov: Solomon Quetsch
(1855–1856), Mayer Feuchtwang (1861–1888), David Feuchtwang (1892–1903),
Moritz Levin (1903–1918), Alfred Willmann (1919–1938).
There were
also a number of fires in the 19th century, but the fire in September
1924, and especially in April 1926, when the fire affected 91 houses,
had catastrophic consequences. These two last fires were one of the
stimuli for the establishment of the Central Jewish Museum for
Moravia-Silesia, which was opened in Mikulov on May 24, 1936 and whose
founder was JUDr. Richard Teltscher.
The complete demise of the
Mikulov Jewish community was brought about by the Second World War. Of
the 472 Jewish inhabitants of the city in 1938, 110 managed to escape
from the Nazis abroad. However, 327 of them did not survive the
Holocaust. The village was never restored.
Today, there is a
monument to the once extensive Jewish ghetto with 317 houses, of which
more than 90 are Renaissance, only a baroque synagogue that serves as a
Jewish museum, 45 houses protected as an immovable cultural monument and
a large Jewish cemetery with several thousand tombstones. Its oldest and
most valuable part is the so-called "rabbi's top" with tombstones of
Moravian regional and local rabbis and members of the richest Mikulov
families.
The "Nikolsburger" Hasidic dynasty, operating mainly in
New York, derives its origin and name from Mikulov, the place of its
foundation.
The name is derived from the personal name Mikul, which was a domestic form of the name Mikuláš. The original form of the name ceased to be used at the beginning of the 14th century in favor of the honored form of the German name Nikolsburg (Niklšpurk and the like). The return to the original Czech form did not occur until the end of the 19th century.
The city is located in rugged terrain on the southern edge of the Pavlovské vrchy. Its dominant feature is the castle on the rock west of the square. To the east is the Svatý kopeček nature reserve and to the north is Turold Hill. Between it and the castle stands a smaller limestone hill with the ruins of Kozí hrádek, providing a circular view of the entire city. The western side opens up to the plain, in the south, not far from the town, there is the low Šibeniční hill and the Šibeník pond below it. Another body of water in the hinterland of Mikulov is the flooded Janičův vrch quarry near the road to Velká Pavlovice.
The city is located at an important road border crossing from the
Czech Republic to Austria on the route Brno - Vienna (road I/52,
European road E461). Road I/40 to Břeclav and then road II/414 to
Hrušovan nad Jevišovkou and road II/421 towards Nové Mlýny and Velké
Pavlovice leave here. Transit traffic is diverted from the center using
bypasses.
In the southwest, two canceled and abandoned roads lead
from Mikulov to Austria, in the direction of Laa an der Thaya and
Falkenstein, partially restored as cycle paths after the Czech Republic
joined the Schengen area.
The regional railway line
Břeclav–Znojmo (No. 246) runs through the town, the local railway
station is called Mikulov na Morava.
Mikulov forms zone 571
within the IDS of the South Moravian Region. It is served by intercity
bus lines 105, 174, 540, 550, 570, 585 and train line S8 (passenger
trains). In the years 1996–2013, the city had its own public transport
(line 581). Some long-distance buses Brno – Vienna also stop here.