The Kamyanets tower, a monument of defense architecture, is situated in the town of Kamyanets, Brest Province. It was erected between 1276-1288 by the order of the Prince of Volyn Vladimir Vasilkovich by the architect Oleksa (?) as the basic element of the defence system of an outpost town at the western border of the Volyn Principality. The tower was erected within a circular rampart and dominated the wooden fortifications.

The Kamyanets pillar (that annalistic name of the tower is still used by the local population) is a round-shaped construction, 13.5 meter in outer diameter, 29 metres high (with 30.15 m merlons), up to 2.5 metres thick in the walls, erected on a solid stone foundation (2 metres 30 centimetres high, 16 metres in diameter). The walls are made of bi-coloured bricks – dark red and yellowish, their size being 26.5x13.5x8 centimetres. The bricks reinforced with lime mortar were laid in a Venedian (Baltic) pattern broadly used in Germany, Poland, and Livonia in those days.

The tower has a cylinder form and has neither vertical nor horizontal junctions.

Loopholes were cut in every level of the tower: two of them were in the first level, three in the second and third level; the fourth level had two loopholes and a large lancet opening decorated with an archivolt from the outside (formed from bricks laid at an angle). Formely, the opening led to a balcony which was put on the outriggers. The narrow and slit-like loopholes of the four lower levers are expanding inwards and followed by semi-circular arches. The fifth level has four loopholes, which, as distinct from others, expand both inwards and outwards and are followed by Gothic vaults. In between the loopholes of the fifth level there are four plane bays of false windows with roman vaults. Another architectural decoration of the tower is an ornament made from bricks laid at 45º angle and framed by a row of bricks laid lengthwise.

Before the restoration in 1903 (architect V. Suslov), the 1^st and 5^th levels had vaults whose bricks and mortar differed greatly from those in the walls. The remains of the brick-made dome-shaped vault sustained by reinforced liernes can be seen over the 5^th level.

From the 5^th level, the wall has a staired passage leading to the battle platform, which is surrounded by 14 merlons with reach-through brick-size holes.

The monument is abundant with laconic Roman and early Gothic forms: lancet windows and openings, ribbed vaults, semicircular plane bays and loopholes.

Such structures used to be called donjons and they were typical for the medieval European military architecture. The Kamyanets Tower is the only survived monument of this kind on the territory of Belarus. From 1960 the Tower hosts a chapter of the Brest regional ethnographic museum.