The Belarusian White Tower
It’s Not Really White
It looks like a chess rook. And it has never been white, only red brick. The reason why it is called “white” is that it stands near the Belovezhskaya Forest. Belo means white. It is also called the Kamenets Tower after the name of the town it is in.
One of the reasons why this tower is the only one of its kind in this region is not because it was the only one built. It’s because, after years of exposure, the bricks melded into one solid rock. So the villagers were unable to purloin the pretty red bricks. It is made entirely of red brick which also makes it unique. Bricks were rarely used in this part of Europe in the 1200s.
Stairway to Heaven
The original entrance was 52 feet (16 meters) from the ground. The tower is 100 feet high. So the front door is halfway up the darn thing. You got in by climbing a portable wooden ladder that was pulled up after you. Can you imagine racing up that ladder at night in a snowstorm and being chased by Mongol hordes or worse, Teutonic Knights (Germans)?
History Alert. If more than 4 lines of history bore you, please skip the next paragraph. In 1260, a huge amount of Mongols (20,000) attacked Volhynia which encompassed all of Belarus and north-western Ukraine. This tower stands in what was Volhynia. The Mongols didn’t stay. They were only there to grab booty. They did it again in 1275 and 1277. Finally, in the 1280s, a Galician-Volhynian prince ordered this tower to be built because… enough is enough.
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