The building of the former Roman Catholic seminary in Kamenets Podolski, completed in 1782, was built in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, on a plot of land belonging to the chapter . It replaced two residential buildings for cathedral canons, erected on the site in the 1770s. The building is in the shape of a horseshoe formed by three wings and a brick fence surrounding an inner courtyard. The entrance to the courtyard was from Jezuicka Street (now Franciszkańska Street) and led through a gate closed with an elliptical arch spanned between a pair of pillars. The longer side of the building faces the cathedral, and the shorter side faces the square and the bishop's palace. The northern façade also marks the southern boundary of the cathedral complex.

The seminary was founded as early as 1721 on the initiative of Bishop Stefan Rupniewski , but it was not until the time of Adam Stanisław Krasiński , Ordinary of the Kamieńec diocese in 1759-1795, that a new building was erected in Kamieńec. The cost of its construction was covered from a fund left by Mateusz Gronkiewicz (d. 1758) , Kamieniec canon and pastor of Jagielniki, who in 1747 bequeathed 122,000 Polish zlotys for the purpose.

At that time, the building was two-storey. According to the description of the cathedral visitation of 1796, the rooms of the alumni and the common spaces, such as the library, the dining room and the kitchen, were located in the front course and were accessible from a corridor running from the courtyard. The main entrance to the seminary was on the cathedral side, which linked it compositionally and functionally to the cathedral complex. The choice of the north façade as the main façade entailed certain consequences. Due to the lowering of the terrain, the façade could not be seen from afar - neither from the side of the square, nor even less from Tatarska Street, where it was additionally obstructed by the high bell tower and the roof of the cathedral. The façade was designed to be viewed from close up, with a strong foreshortening of perspective - from below upwards and at an angle. This explains why the lower storeys of the building were almost completely devoid of architectural detail. It was limited to wide bands with rails around the window and door openings, which barely protruded in front of the wall plane. Only the higher parts of the building were distinguished by a beam with a strongly protruding profiled cornice, dynamically broken on the axis of the supports. The central part of the façade was accentuated by a pseudo-portico, consisting of four pilasters of the grand Tuscan order, topped by a high, full attic. Four busts of bishops were placed on the attic, in line with the arrangement of the pilasters, which were extended by broken elements of the beam, which then passed into the vertical divisions of the attic. The portal was preceded by a two-rung staircase with a platform. The positioning of the bases of the pilasters on high pedestals and the extensive empty wall surfaces between the openings gave the façade a monumental but not overwhelming character. The opposite effect was not achieved until the second half of the 19th century, after the addition of the third storey.

The eastern façade, facing the market square, was deliberately more modest. The eight-axis façade was divided by two pairs of pilasters into three sections with windows between them. This created a clear contrast with the neighbouring Cathedral Gate to the south, which was built at the same time and has a single-bar triumphal arch, crowned by a pyramidal sculptural composition with St John of Nepomuk as the culminating element. This gate led both to the church grounds and served as a representative entrance to the seminary.

The building was constructed from local broken limestone , used in Kamenz for paving streets and building houses. This material was so widely used that almost all the buildings constructed in the town were built from it. It was covered by a broken roof with a concave lower slope, covered with shingles - which was also a characteristic element of the architecture of 18th century Kamieniec Podolski. As the walls of the seminary were originally unplastered and had a rough texture, in contrast, the articulation elements of the façade - such as pilasters, beams, plinths, and the framing of windows and portals - were made of carved stone, carefully smoothed. Similarly, the three corners of the building are rounded and framed by doubled, narrow masonry projections.

The characteristic formal solutions applied to the seminary building make it possible to associate its design with the work of Jan de Witte , who in the 1850s participated in the modernisation of the cathedral complex commissioned by Bishop Mikolaj Dembowski. He is credited with the Baroque reconstruction of the cathedral façade, the crowning of the minaret with the statue of Immaculata and the superstructure of the two upper tiers of the bell tower. On this basis, Olga Płamienicka put forward the hypothesis that de Witte was the author of the design of the seminary building. The credibility of this thesis is strengthened by an additional argument: the analogous solution of the corners used both in the façade of the Kamianets Seminary and in the corner of the Lubomirski Palace at the junction of Ruska and Fedorova Streets in Lviv - a work by Jan de Witte (1709-1785), confirmed by sources, rebuilt by the architect for Prince Stanisław Lubomirski in 1763. The juxtaposition of these formal features with the historical context makes the attribution of the authorship of the seminary building to Jan de Witte seem even more justified.

The seminary functioned in this building from 1782 to 1793. , that is, until the occupation of Podolia and Kamieniec by Russia after the second partition of Poland. Bishop Michał Roman Sierakowski then decided to move the seminary and the three seminarians studying there to Ołyka . The building was confiscated by the tsarist authorities, but it was only after the creation of the Podolia guberniya in 1796 that it was designated as the seat of the guberniya government . At that time, the bishops' busts, originally placed on the attic of the portico, were moved to the buttresses of the Chapel of the Consolation of the Virgin Mary, located on the southern façade of the cathedral.

The architecture of the building - with the exception of the interior, which began to be adapted to its new function as early as the end of the 18th century. - With the exception of the interior, which began to be adapted for its new purpose at the end of the 18th century, the architecture of the building remained unchanged until the tragic fire that broke out in the cathedral on the night of 29-30 June 1862 , which destroyed the shingle roofs over the cathedral and seminary. After reconstruction, the building's roof was changed from a mansard to a hipped roof covered with iron sheeting, the eastern façade received simple pediments over the first-floor windows and inter-storey and sub-window cornices, and the smeared walls were plastered, stripping them of their original old-fashioned character. In 1877, a third storey was added over the north and west wings, and in 1959 also over the east wing. These changes significantly disrupted the original proportions of the building, and the enlargement of the window openings and addition of new entrances led to the irreversible destruction of the original divisions and architectural details.

Building by date

1780-1782 - construction of the seminary
1877 - addition of a third storey over the north wing (from the cathedral) and the west wing (from the bishop's palace)
1959 - addition of a third storey over the east wing (from Rynek Polski)