Vepice, Fortified house in Vepice, Czech Republic

Vepice is a vanished fortress whose site is a flat, circular island about 15 metres across, roughly 20 metres from the shore of Nový rybník at the southern edge of Vepice. No walls or buildings survive; a modern wooden cabin stands on the island, which is protected as a cultural monument.

Vepice was a fortified residence of the local vladyka family, first documented through Jaroslav of Vepice, who ended a boundary dispute with the Milevsko monastery by a contract of 1373. Written sources mention the fortress in 1437, when the inheritance association of the Rakovice nobles was dissolved with Burjan and Fraňek of Vepice. The family died out at the end of the 15th century and the fortress was abandoned; in 1498 Vepice belonged to Březí.

The name Vepice comes from the vladyka family that held the fortress; its best-known member, František z Vepic, was abbot of Milevský klášter from 1383 to 1404 and saw the completion of the church of St Giles, where his coat of arms appears in two places. The family died out at the end of the 15th century and the fortress was abandoned with it.

The fortress site is a flat, circular islet about 15 m across, roughly 20 m from the shore of Nový rybník at the southern edge of Vepice; it holds a modern wooden cabin and no walls. Reach it from the village across the shore, and note that František Kašička and Bořivoj Nechvátal placed the fortress rather at house No. 8 on the pond's western edge.

The fortress itself has vanished; only a flat, round islet about 15 metres across remains in Nový rybník, some 20 metres from the shore, with a modern wooden cabin standing on it. When the pond was cleaned in 1900, worked oak beams, iron axes, spearheads and arrowheads were found and are now kept in the National Museum in Prague.