Four and a half centuries of classical dressage, performed by Lipizzaner stallions in a white Baroque hall.
Founded in 1565, the Spanish Riding School is the oldest riding academy in the world still practising classical dressage in the Renaissance tradition, and UNESCO lists the practice as intangible cultural heritage.
The name is Spanish because the horses originally were: Iberian stock crossed at the imperial stud at Lipica, in what is now Slovenia, from 1580. The Lipizzaners are born dark — bay or black — and lighten to white over six to ten years. A small number never turn, and by tradition one dark horse is kept in the stable for luck.
The Winter Riding School
The hall itself, by Fischer von Erlach the younger and finished in 1735, is worth the ticket on its own: white, galleried on two levels, lit by chandeliers, with a portrait of Charles VI at one end that riders salute on entering. It has never been anything else.
What you can see
Performances run through the season, roughly September to June, and last around eighty minutes with music. They build from young stallions on the long rein to the pas de deux and the school quadrille, and end with the airs above the ground — the courbette, levade and capriole, movements that come from battlefield manoeuvres and take years to train.
Morning Exercise runs on most mornings when there is no performance. The horses train for about an hour with music, riders come and go, and it is unchoreographed. Tickets are much cheaper and you can arrive and leave when you like. For many people it is the better experience.
Guided tours of the stables and the tack rooms run in the afternoons and are separately booked.
Booking
Performances sell out well ahead, particularly in December and around Easter. Book online. Morning Exercise usually has same-day availability but queues.
The war
In 1945 the school’s stallions were moved to St Martin in Upper Austria, and the mares had been taken to Hostau in Bohemia, in the path of the advancing Red Army. Colonel Alois Podhajsky persuaded General Patton — himself an Olympic horseman — to take them under American protection, and a US cavalry unit crossed the lines to recover the mares. Disney made a film of it. The unlikely part is that it is essentially true.
A note
Some visitors object to the training on welfare grounds and the school is periodically criticised. It publishes its practices and the horses are worked into their twenties. Form your own view; it is a reasonable thing to think about.
More Culture & Music
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A municipal housing block with no straight lines, uneven floors and trees growing out of the windows — and people still live in it.
The Secession Building
A white cube with a gilded dome of laurel leaves, built in 1898 as a manifesto, holding Klimt's Beethoven Frieze in the basement.
The Musikverein
The Golden Hall, where the New Year's Concert is broadcast from, and an acoustic that was arrived at largely by accident.