Solnice, Late Gothic salt house on Piaristické náměstí, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

Solnice is a late Gothic building on Piaristické náměstí, built in 1531 as a granary. The long single-nave structure has five storeys, a white facade ending in a stepped gable with keyhole loopholes, and a stone plaque with the year 1531 at the fifth-floor level. It adjoins the old town walls on one side and opens onto the square on the other.

Built in 1531 within the grounds of the Dominican monastery cemetery, the building first served as the city's granary. It was later used as an arsenal and then as a warehouse for salt transported along the Linzer Steig to Bohemia. A second salt house, built in 1564 in Česká ulice, handled salt loaded onto boats on the Malše.

The building's name comes from its final use as a salt store; salt arrived via the Linzer Steig and was hauled through four floor-level openings with rope winches. Three carved stone heads on the east facade and a fourth on the west gable are linked by legend to thieves beheaded after plotting to rob the neighbouring Church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary.

The building stands on Piaristické náměstí, its east facade facing the square and its rear against the old town walls by the blind arm of the Malše. Since 2019 it houses a restaurant with an exhibition space, reached through a network of underground beer pipes linked to a brewery in Hroznová street. Look for the stone heads on the facade.

Four stone heads are carved into the building: three on the east facade at the third, fifth and sixth floors, and a fourth on the west gable facing the Malše backwater. Legend says they are the severed heads of robbers who tried to rob the neighbouring Church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary.