Description of the attraction
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 height of the towers is 22 meters. 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, figured trims, 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 necessary for the city.
There is a legend about why the towers are called that. 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 the other, there were some warehouses and Kasia was the storekeeper in it.
The towers now house art workshops, where you can see photographs of the artists' works. Next to one of the towers there is an unusual sculptural composition: a fat black cat, dreamily looking at a starling sitting next to his bronze birdhouse at a height inaccessible to a cat.
