It was designed to be looked from, not looked at, placed precisely where it would frame the coastline stretching away to the south. That is what a belvedere is, the word coming from the Italian for "beautiful view", a structure whose entire purpose is the carefully composed prospect it offers. This one at Downeen, attached to the estate of Castle Downeen in West Cork, is a two-storey embattled tower, meaning it carries a parapet with the alternating raised and lowered sections more usually associated with fortifications. Here the battlements are ornamental, part of the theatrical vocabulary of eighteenth and nineteenth century estate design, where landowners liked to dress their pleasure grounds in a vaguely medieval costume.

The structure has pointed door and window openings, again borrowing from Gothic architecture for aesthetic effect rather than structural necessity. A string course, a narrow horizontal band of projecting stonework, runs beneath the parapet and gives the upper storey a neat visual boundary. The external walls were originally weatherslated, that is, covered with overlapping slates fixed vertically to keep out driving rain, a practical measure common in exposed coastal parts of Munster. Together the details suggest a building that was taken seriously as a piece of architecture, something more considered than a simple garden folly, positioned to make the most of its site within the garden wall while directing the eye outward toward the sea.