Bory Castle (Hungary)

The castle was built by Jenő Bory (1879-1959), a sculptor and architect, a sculptor at the College of Fine Arts and an architect at the University of Technology, for 40 summers based on his own plans and imagination, commemorating his marital love and artistic dreams.

The castle plot, on which only a wine cellar originally stood between vineyards and fruit trees with the press house belonging to it, was bought in 1912 by Jenő Bory. He then expanded the press house into an apartment and built a studio above it. He did not start building the castle until after the First World War, when he was able to spend on it from the royalties of his growing sculptural orders.

He continued the construction, the constant chiselling of the details, and the restoration work after the Second World War until his death. Mostly he worked alone, relying on his two hands, using up to a few occasional help. He was a trained architect, yet he was not guided in his work by specific engineering drawings, but rather by his inspiration for imagination and adaptation to specific terrain conditions. The slowly growing walls, the shapes of the towers, the spaces they embrace were the result of the same artistic vision as the sculptures, so Bory Castle is nothing more than a sculptural work of art taking on forms and dimensions.

Walking through the castle, the visitor can feel step by step that the material that comes back again and again is nothing but concrete. Quite precisely, the quartz concrete preferred by Jenő Bory. At the beginning of the twentieth century, concrete appeared as a material renewing architecture, and one of the very first users in Hungary was Jenő Bory. Door and window frames, columns, domes, railings and stairs, as well as garden fountains, pools, sculptures and reliefs, in a wide variety of sizes, were made of this material.

The castle was inhabited by contemporary artists as well as the wife of a painter, Ilona Komócsin (1885-1974) and her own works of art. There is a sculpture and picture exhibition in the studio. The original versions of the plaster sculptures under the arcade of the Hundred Column Courtyard can still be found in various settlements of the country today, cast in bronze or carved in marble. At the back of the courtyard, in the Chapel, a statue of Marital Love awaits visitors.

Today, the Bory Castle is owned by the descendants of Jenő Bory, and the castle is maintained and operated with the help of the foundation they established.