Turkish wars

The Turkish onslaught to the centre of the Habsburg monarchy intensified after (from the point of view of Czech history) the unfortunate and disastrous defeat at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526.

In the next decades of the 16th  century Vienna and southern Moravia had to resist the troops of the Ottoman armies.

In August 1683 the Polish king Jan III. Sobieskí visited Mikulov while drawing towards a Vienna besieged by Sultan Mustafa’s 100,000-strong Turkish army. From the middle of August his army moved through Moravia and on the 25th of August reached Mikulov. The Polish king arrived in Mikulov on the 30th of August where , in the following days, his troops assembled and together with the Imperial army these forces marched towards  Vienna, where a battle, started by a devastating attack by allies from Kahlenbeg hill, was fought, breaking the Turkish siege (12. September 1683).

While traversing the Pálava hills you can, depending on the weather, catch sight of the Viennese hills Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg from which Sobieski commanded the offensive against the Turks.

King`s throne view – according to legend, it was here that king Sobieski watched his 30,000-strong troops cross the river Thaya, as he was marching to help Vienna.

In 1892 a wooden pavilion was build here to honour the Polish king, which served as a lookout till the end of the First World War. In 1922 near the original pavilion a new gazebo was constructed by a combined effort of Czech and German tourist associations, which has survived till today and still provides a beautiful view of the landscape of the river Thaya.

The Turkish wars also had architectural echoes in southern Moravia. Such significantly historically resonating sights are the romantic construction of the Minaret in the Lednice-Valtice area (serves as an observation tower) and the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in an oriental style at the Holy Hill above Mikulov.