Water towers description and photos - Belarus: Grodno (Topic)

Water towers description and photos - Belarus: Grodno. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photos and a map showing the nearest significant objects.

Photo and description

The Kasya and Basya water towers are an unusual urban decoration and a monument of industrial architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were built of red bricks, finished with colored and white plaster. The octagonal towers have 4 tiers, the floors are wooden. Covered with eight-pitched roofs. Inside the towers, in the upper part, there are reservoirs with water, in the center there is a pipe for water supply.

The towers are 22 meters high. The western tower, which is now painted pink, was erected in 1890, the eastern (yellow) - in 1905. The western tower was built, presumably, in the neo-Renaissance style and is richly decorated with pilasters, paddles, croutons, curly platbands, lucarnes. At the eastern tower, the decor is simpler, but there is a balcony where artisan workers plant flowers.

The Western Tower was opened for the very first Grodno water pipeline opposite the Skidel market. The second was built when the first one ceased to cope with the volume of water required by the city.

There is a legend about why the towers are so called. Old-timers say that in one tower there used to be a water utility's accounting department and an accountant named Basya worked in it. In another, there were some warehouses and Kasia was a storekeeper in it.

Now the towers house art workshops, where you can see photographs of the artists' works. An unusual sculptural composition is located next to one of the towers: a fat black cat, dreamily looking at a starling sitting next to his bronze birdhouse at a height inaccessible to a cat.

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Topic: Water towers description and photos - Belarus: Grodno.