A colossal tower of pale stone, its upper stories turning red and still unfinished, rises in stacked rings of arches above a busy harbor and a sprawling city. Scaffolding, cranes and tiny workers cling to its sides, and ships crowd the water at the right. In the lower left a king in a white robe visits stonemasons cutting blocks, some of whom kneel before him, and green countryside stretches to the horizon. Pieter Bruegel the Elder signed and dated the panel 1563 on a stone block at the bottom.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum identifies the king as Nimrod, the tower's builder, a figure who is not in the Bible but comes from a legend assembled by the historian Flavius Josephus. Bruegel anchored the tower on a rocky slope yet distorted it so that it seems to sink slightly into the ground on the left, a hint of human hubris. Its stone shell mixes classical and Romanesque architecture, with workers' homes built into it. The city at the tower's foot is imagined, not a real place.

The painting's first recorded owner, in 1566, was Nicolaes Jongelinck; it probably passed to the city of Antwerp that year, and later belonged to Emperor Rudolf II and then to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.