The Venue

The 7th Liblice Conference on the Statistical Mechanics of Liquids was held at the MyHotel Conference Center in Lednice, a small town in the Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape region of Moravia. This region has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1996, and is the main producer of wine in the Czech Republic. It lies along the border with Austria, about 80 km north of Vienna (see map).

Between the 17th and 20th centuries, the ruling dukes of Liechtenstein transformed their holdings in southern Moravia into a striking landscape, marrying Baroque architecture (mainly the work of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach) and the classical and neo-Gothic style of the chateaus of Lednice and Valtice with a countryside fashioned according to the English romantic principles of landscape architecture. At 200 sq. km, Lednice-Valtice is one of the largest artificial landscapes in Europe.

Valtice and wine are two terms that have been inseparable for hundreds of years, with Valtice being called "The Capital of Wine". The Chateau of Valtice was formerly the ostentatious domicile of the Austrian as well as the Moravian house of Liechtenstein. Today, its cellars host the Bank of Wines of the Czech Republic, while other rooms are devoted to the National Center for Viniculture and to the Moravin Union, the largest association of Czech and Moravian wine producers.