One distinctive figure at Bory Castle is the plaster sculpture Sleeping Beauty, installed in the vaulted space of the castle cellar. Bory Jenő once decorated the reclining half-figure of a woman, 107 cm in length, with roses, as though the sleeping princess of the well-known fairy tale were resting in the depths of an enchanted garden.
The work appears not as an autonomous sculpture, but as a spatial composition that can be understood together with its surroundings. Bory consciously integrated the fairy-tale figure into his own world, which moves on the boundary between imagination and reality. The Sleeping Beauty figure is thus not merely an evocation of a familiar story, but also an expression of the idea that art can keep dreams, legends and childhood imagination alive. Although it was evident to everyone that this was a plaster sculpture, the setting and the story nevertheless brought the fairy tale to life again and again. This playfulness is characteristic of the whole spirit of Bory Castle, where architecture, sculpture, history and fantasy form a unity by complementing one another.
Sleeping Beauty is therefore not simply a sculpture placed in a cellar room, but part of Bory Castle’s own mythology: a silent character that has guarded the fairy-tale world of the place for decades.