Nikolsburg

In the past, Mikulov was the center of Moravian Jews. The local yeshiva was famous and enjoyed extraordinary fame. From the middle of the 16th century until 1851, it was also the seat of the Moravian rabbis. Rabbis Yehuda Löw ben Becalel (Maharal), called Rabbi Löw, a prominent scholar, educator, Kabbalist, according to the legend of the Golem, and David ben Avraham Oppenheimer, originally from Worms, worked here. Both became the chief rabbis of Prague.

The Jewish Quarter is located on Zámecký vrch. 90 houses have been preserved from it, half of them are state-protected cultural monuments. The upper synagogue, rebuilt in the Baroque style, dates from 1550.

The Jewish cemetery was founded in the 15th century. There are 4,000 tombstones on it, the oldest legible is from 1605. Famous rabbis are buried on the rabbinical hill, such as Menachem Mendel ben Avraham Krochmal, originally from Cracow (author of the Shai takanot law system) and Šmu'el Šmelke ben Hirš ha-Levi Horovic with Mordechai ben Avraham Benet, from which two famous Hasidic dynasties in the USA are derived. The tombs of rabbis are worshiped by visitors from all over the world.

The lawyer and writer Josef von Sonnenfels or the publicist and poet Hieronymus Lorm (Heinrich Landesmann), the author of Lorm's tactile alphabet for the deafblind, was born in Mikulov.