Mikulov stands beneath a white limestone ridge, the Pálava hills, and from a distance its castle on the rock and the pale church tower on the Holy Hill look like a stage set. It is the southernmost town in Moravia, a few kilometres from the Austrian border, and it has been a crossroads for centuries, a place where Czech, German and Jewish cultures lived together. In German it was Nikolsburg, and for a long period it was one of the most important Jewish communities in central Europe.
The old Jewish quarter and the cemetery on the edge of town, with thousands of gravestones in the grass, are still there, and the synagogue is open as a museum. The castle, a large complex of Renaissance and baroque buildings, was held by the Dietrichstein family, whose tombs lie in a chapel nearby. Walking uphill from the main square, past tall painted houses and stone steps, brings you to the castle terrace, with a wide view over the vineyards and the plain toward Austria.
The Pálava hills behind the town are a protected landscape, a UNESCO biosphere reserve, with dry meadows, rock steppes and scattered oak forest, home to many rare plants and insects. They are a limestone outcrop tied to the Alpine and Carpathian chain, standing out from the plain, and the vineyards on their slopes produce some of the best wine in the country. At the foot of the hills, the village of Dolní Věstonice is where the Venus figurine, a small ceramic statuette some twenty-nine thousand years old, was found in 1925, one of the oldest ceramic objects ever made.
For riders the roads around Mikulov are a mixture of straight farm roads and a few curves on the hill. The surface is good, the traffic is moderate, and in summer the heat and the visitors can be intense. Mikulov has about seven and a half thousand people and everything a traveller needs, including fuel and several good restaurants. A glass of local wine in the square is a fine finish to the day, so long as the bike stays parked. The wine festivals in September bring music and crowds.