Tower of Kamyenyets

The Tower of Kamyenyets (Belarusian: Камянецкая вежа; Russian: Каменецкая башня), also called the White Tower (Belarusian: Белая вежа, romanized: Bielaya vieža), is the main landmark of the town of Kamyenyets in Belarus. The name Bielaja Vieža (alternative transliteration: Belaya Vezha), which literally means White Tower or White Fortress in Belarusian, presumably derives from the tower's proximity to the Belavezhskaya Pushcha Forest, but not from its color, which has been brick-red through the ages, never white.^[1]

The first record in the chronicles about the foundation of the tower dates from 1276. Erected between 1271 and 1289 by the architect Oleksa as a frontier stronghold on the northern border of the Principality of Volhynia, it is the only such tower remaining to this day in Belarus.^[2] (Once similar towers were built in Brest, Grodno, Turaw, Navahradak, but they were destroyed in the course of wars.)

Today it is a national historic site. Standing atop a gentle rise overlooking the Liasnaja river, the tower is the main landmark of Kamyenyets today. Since 1960 the tower houses a branch of the Brest regional museum. On January 30, 2004, the site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, in the Cultural category,^[3] but in 2015 it was removed from the list.