A mural tower, in the vocabulary of medieval fortification, is simply a tower built into or projecting from a defensive wall, rather than standing free; Geneval's Tower, as it was known, formed one link in the chain of the Dublin city walls, positioned roughly 57 metres east of Pole Gate and 77 metres west of St Nicholas' Gate. What makes it worth pausing over is the precision of the 1585 description that survives in the Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin: the tower was round on its outer face but square within, three storeys tall with two timber loft floors, walls eight feet thick, and a total height of forty-six feet. Someone cared enough about the detail to record the dimensions both ways, twelve feet in one direction and sixteen in the other.

The tower's recorded history stretches back to at least the late sixteenth century, when it was in the possession of a Mr Parkins. By 1603 to 1604, the Dublin Assembly Roll noted that a Richard Durninge held an interest in parcels of city property including the tower near what was then called Genevelles Inns, a detail that places a domestic or commercial structure immediately alongside the fortification. Archaeologically, the sequence runs considerably deeper. Excavations carried out in 1992 and 1993 by Claire Walsh and Alan Hayden established that the tower overlay an earlier stone wall constructed in the early twelfth century, which had itself replaced a Viking earthen bank dating to the tenth century. The site was therefore accumulating layers of defensive investment for roughly six hundred years before anyone set a surveyor's rod against the finished tower. A sub-surface viewing enclosure, described in the 1993 excavation report as crypt-like, was constructed to allow the remains to be seen, and finds from that work included pottery, floor tiles, iron nails and rivets, a small copper-alloy boss, and fragments of leather. A foundation structure abutting the tower was also identified, tentatively interpreted as the remains of Geneval's Inns itself.

The site lies on the north side of Ross Road in Dublin's south city, in the area close to where the medieval walls ran before the city expanded beyond them. John Speed's 1610 map of Dublin shows the tower still marked between Pole Gate and St Nicholas' Gate, so the cartographic record alone offers a useful frame for understanding where these structures once sat relative to one another. The sub-surface viewing structure built following the 1993 excavations was intended to give public access to the remains, so it is worth checking local heritage resources or Dublin City Council's archaeological records for current access arrangements before making a specific visit, as below-ground viewing enclosures can be seasonal or intermittently open.