Photos

The beginnings of the Jewish settlement in Mikulov go back 650 years. Mikulov was closest place Jews could flee to after they were expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria in 1421 and again in 1670. It was also a strategic point on the trade route from Vienna to Brno. In Mikulov the local nobility welcomed the Jewish community and allowed it to quickly prosper until it grew into the largest Jewish community in Moravia.
The Jewish community in Mikulov is an extraordinary burial grounds with Renaissance, Baroque, and Classicist gravestones, the artisanship of which provided a model for other Jewish cemeteries in South Moravia. Of its 4,000 or so tombstones, the oldest legible dates from 1605.
The most valuable part of the cemetery is the so-called Rabbis' Hill, where rest some of the most legendary Moravian regional rabbis such as Menachem Mendl Krochmal (died 1637), Shemuel Shmelke Horowitz (1778) a Mordecaj Benet (1829) - the destination of pilgrims from around the world.