Solnice

Solnice is a Renaissance building from 1531 on Piaristické Square that today houses a restaurant with its own brewery — and the beer does not come in by kegs but through pipes running seventy metres under the square’s paving. What it mainly shares with salt is the name.

The building has lasted almost five hundred years without major rebuilds, and under its roof is the fourth-oldest roof frame of its kind in Czechia. For most of that time it was the town granary, and according to archive director Daniel Kovář it worked as a grain bank: debt registers from 1550–1576 show that people borrowed grain there and later returned it.

Since 2019 it has held a restaurant for two hundred people and for its restoration the building won the Monument of the Year title. Beer is brewed in the neighbouring house on the corner of Hroznová and Česká streets.

A name that misleads

Solnice has stood on Piaristické náměstí since 1531, built by the town master builder Jakub when Budějovice was expanding its property and farmland. Salt was stored here for only a short stretch of that half-millennium; for far longer it served as a granary and armoury. The name stuck anyway — and today most visitors hear “salt” and assume that is the whole story.

Stone faces on the façade

Three stone faces of different sizes look out from the main façade; a fourth sits on the west gable. Local legend links them to the brave nun who trapped thieves in the monastery church — a tale told in full among the Budějovice legends. Historians treat the masks as Renaissance architectural decoration; the story came later and fitted the faces perfectly.

Beer under the square

Today Solnice is among the best-known historic venues in town. The kitchen follows Austro-Hungarian tradition with an emphasis on house baking and smoked meats. Beer from the Solnice brewery does not come in kegs but through a pipe laid 70 metres under the paving of Piaristické náměstí — the beer line is strong enough to push beer up to the second floor.

On site

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