On your right, the Bishop's Castle stands in pale stone and white plaster as a compact fortified block, marked by a tall square tower and its steep tiled roof.
This is Püspökvár, the bishop's stronghold on the city’s old hill, with enough history for several buildings, frankly. What matters most here is not power, but protection.
In nineteen forty-one, Vilmos Apor became bishop of Győr. Then, during the bombing in nineteen forty-five, he opened the castle cellar as a refuge for about two hundred displaced people. When Soviet soldiers tried to drag women out of that shelter on Good Friday, Apor stood in their way. He refused to hand them over. They shot him in the basement. That act turned a bishop's residence into a place of martyrdom.
If you glance at the image in the app, you can see the castle's hilltop presence; from out here it still reads as authority, but below ground its story is far more intimate.
And locals will tell you the cellar kept one more secret. After nineteen forty-nine, canon József Zágon hid forty-six diocesan treasures here to save them from confiscation. They stayed concealed for nearly three decades, only coming to light after his death. So memory here survives in layers: in testimony, in preserved rooms, in a museum opened in two thousand and four at the very spot where Apor died.
In a moment, head across to the basilica. If this castle holds sacrifice, the church ahead holds the city's answer in prayer and remembrance.
