**1. Introduction**

The large cultural landscape along the border of South Moravia and Lower Austria used to be one continuous area. A varied array of unique monuments related to the evolution of the landscape from ancient times to the present has been preserved. This area became rich thanks to the extraordinary financial potential of the then landowners (the Dietrichsteins, the Liechtensteins, and many other noble families). Their wealth, broad cultural vision, purposefulness, ambition and other contemporary values, along with the effect of positive rivalry, are permanently imprinted on the distinctive character of the landscape.

The project "*Portz Insel Project—Accessing and reconstruction of a designed historic landscape"* was carried out by the City of Mikulov and Drasenhofen in Austria**.** The preparation of the project began in 2016 and subsequent preparatory steps

**Figure 1.** *Historic brick bridge.*

were taken. In 2018, a subsidy for the project execution from the cooperation programme *"Interreg V-A Austria-Czech Republic 2014–2020"* was approved. From September 2018 to June 2020 the project itself was carried out. Its main goal was to renovate and provide access to the historic brick bridge with 15 arches and connect the bridge through the renovation of the old road network in the municipalities of Mikulov—Drasenhofen (**Figure 1**).

The completed project aimed to restore the historically valuable area situated in the locality of the peninsula named Portz Insel. It used to be part of the designed peri-urban landscape, whose development was commissioned by Franz Cardinal Dietrichstein in the 17th century. It was one of the earliest generously urbanised landscapes in Moravia and likely also in the larger territory north of the Alps. The island complex, accessible over the long brick bridge supported by arched abutments and connected to the City of Mikulov through a two and a half kilometre long allée, originally an access road for carriages, was an extraordinary work of architecture of its time. It was still described by historians as a landscape jewel of unique beauty in the late nineteenth century [1].

Extraordinary changes spread through the Mikulov region's cultural landscape in the extremely fruitful era of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, associated with the well-known members of the Dietrichstein aristocratic family**.** Pond cascades, stream and millrace beds, water mills and fisheries, avenues of trees and orchards, bridges and summer houses all created an almost magical landscape of which, regrettably, only fragments have survived. Outstanding among these fragments, the complex near the pond formerly named Portz, harbours the summer residence and ruins amidst the forest. In the 17th century, the complex was surrounded by gardens and cultivated vegetation, offering enjoyment and respite, and showing the status of the Mikulov Princes of Dietrichstein. Franz Cardinal Dietrichstein is a widely known figure of central European history in the early modern times. He would purposefully bring to Moravia the period concepts of Italian Recatholization culture that he was intimately familiar with [1].
