Metravel city quest
City Kamyanyets: free walking route “Kamenets quest: the White Tower and the giants” along the sights. 10 points. Approximately 2 h. Quests and legends
Around 1276, the Volhynian prince Vladimir Vasilkovich sent “мужа хитра, именем Алексу”, a skilful man named Aleksa, to the north of his lands to find a site for a new town. Aleksa found a high bank on the River Lesnaya. The town was built of timber and named Kamenets, “зане бысть земля камена”, because the ground here was stony. Above it rose a stone pillar almost thirty metres high: a keep, the only Volhynian-type tower to survive intact to this day.
A chronicle is a chronicle, but the people of Kamenets have their own version. Giants built the tower, they say. To reach the masonry more conveniently, they worked on their knees, and the work went quickly: the tower grew before their eyes. Once finished, the giants stood to their full height and left across the River Lesnaya in seven-league strides. Where one of their enormous footprints remained, a village grew up and was named Stupichevo, after that footprint.
There is another riddle: the tower has long been called the White Tower. You will discover how that name fits its real appearance towards the end of the route, when you stand at its foot.
Today you will walk through old Kamenets: from a Catholic church that once became a restaurant to an Orthodox church on a rise and a monument to a man with a shield; then through the former small town's trading quarter, past the old pharmacy to a library wall with a scholar's portrait. Ahead lie the quiet walls of a former synagogue, the tower itself, a large mural nearby and the river across which the giants departed. The walking route is about one and a half kilometres through the town centre.
We begin at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, at the southern end of the old main street.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
Kamenets has an ancient Catholic parish. Its first church was built in 1501 with funds from the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Alexander Jagiellon.
From the Catholic church, walk into the old centre towards the church on the rise. This is St Simeon's Church, Kamenets's second landmark after the tower, visible kilometres away from town.
From the church, walk to the little square in the old centre, between the small-town buildings and the tower. A bronze composition was installed here in 1990, created by sculptor Alexander Lyshchik, a native of Kamenets.
From the monument, continue through the old trading quarter. You are in the heart of the former small town.
The memory preserved beside the tower is not only of builders and princes. A scholar's portrait wearing round glasses is mounted on the district library's façade.
From the library, walk to the former synagogue. Ahead is a quarter about which the glossy guidebooks say nothing.
Here it is. Almost thirty metres high, 29.4 metres to the tops of its battlements, thirteen and a half metres across, with walls two and a half metres thick and five levels connected by stairs within the masonry.
If time allows, go inside. The tower has housed a museum since 1960, a branch of the Brest Regional Museum of Local History.
Opening hours: Summer hours: Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00 (ticket office until 18:30); closed on Mondays. Winter hours are shorter: check the museum website
The square in front of the tower offers another reason to stop: a large portrait on the end wall of a building. A girl in a headscarf fills almost the entire wall, and her face is visible from afar.
From the mural, walk to the riverbank, leaving the tower behind you. The River Lesnaya curves around the foot of the tower's hill.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.