The classical riding schools.

The riding masters

The art of riding was written down again in the Renaissance, in books that later dressage riders still cite. Most of what our research found about these early authors came from search summaries, so the dates below are unconfirmed unless a page was read directly.

• Federico Grisone. Summaries of Wikipedia and of a Middle Tennessee State University special collections page say Grisone ran a riding academy in Naples from 1532 and published "Gli ordini di cavalcare" in 1550, one of the first books on horsemanship since Xenophon. One of those sources counts 23 Italian editions between 1550 and 1620, along with translations. Most sources give 1550, but a US Dressage Federation history document is summarised as giving 1552; we could not extract its text to check. Wikipedia's summary describes Grisone's methods as harsh, with severe spurs and bits, while noting that ideas his book discusses, such as contact and collection, remain central to dressage.
• Antoine de Pluvinel. His "Le Manege Royal" is dated 1623 in a summary of a page on early dressage literature.
• Francois Robichon de La Gueriniere. Wikipedia says he was riding master to Louis XV and that his teaching is the source of the Cadre Noir's style. The date of his "Ecole de Cavalerie" is given two ways: 1731 in Wikipedia's Cadre Noir article, and 1729 in a summary of the early dressage literature page.

The Spanish Riding School, Vienna

Founding

The Spanish Riding School dates its own beginning to a document of 20 September 1565, which records a payment for a riding ground near the Hofburg, where Josefsplatz is today. One travel website, seen only as a search summary, gives 1569 as the founding year instead; the school's own date is 1565.

The school's own chronology

The school's history pages give these milestones:

1580

Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria set up a court stud near Lipica, where the Lipizzaner breed developed.

1729 to 1735

Emperor Charles VI had the Winter Riding School built in the Hofburg. It was designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and finished by his son.

1848

The monarchy's first parliament met in the Winter Riding School, with its formal opening session on 22 July.

1898

Field Marshal Franz von Holbein-Holbeinsberg and Chief Rider Johann Meixner wrote down the school's riding principles, until then passed on by word of mouth, as its "Directives".

1920

After the First World War, the Austrian part of the Lipizzaner herd moved to the Federal Stud at Piber in western Styria, where the line is still bred.

1945

The school's stallions and the mare herd, which had been evacuated from Piber to Hostau in Bohemia, were brought together again at St. Martin in Upper Austria and then moved to Wels and Wimsbach.

26 October 1955

The school, back in the Vienna Hofburg that year, gave its first performance there.

2001

The school and the Piber stud became a single public-law body, "Spanish Riding School - Lipizzaner Stud Piber", wholly owned by the Austrian federal government.

9 September 2008

Women were accepted into rider training for the first time (two women). In 2016 Hannah Zeitlhofer became the first woman appointed a rider.

2010, 2015 and 2022

The High School of Classical Horsemanship was recognised as Austrian national cultural heritage in 2010 and added to UNESCO's list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2015, the school's 450th anniversary year. Knowledge of Lipizzaner breeding was added to UNESCO's Representative List on 1 December 2022.

The school's two pages disagree on one date: its history page gives Alois Podhajsky's time as director as 1939 to 1964, while its "460 years" page says he became director in 1938.

The school's own account of 1945 does not mention any part played by the US Army in saving the horses. We found no source we could check for that story, so it is not told here.

The school also says its stallion Neapolitano Nima I turned 40 in 2019, which it describes as making him the oldest registered Lipizzaner in the world. That is the school's claim.

Saumur and the Cadre Noir

The French school at Saumur is dated differently by its two main sources:

• The Saumur tourist office, seen as a search summary, dates the Cadre Noir's history to 1815, when a school for mounted troops was created in Saumur, and its teaching doctrine to 1825. The same summary gives its original purpose as training riding instructors for the whole French cavalry.
• Wikipedia says the school was founded at Versailles and moved to Saumur in 1828.

Wikipedia records a long dispute that began in 1843, when Francois Baucher brought his method to the school and clashed for several years with its head, the vicomte d'Aure. During the Second World War, it says, German forces occupied the school, and the remaining instructors and horses moved for a time to Fontainebleau. In 1972 the Ecole Nationale d'Equitation was formed around the Cadre Noir, which supplied its core teaching staff.

In 2011, at its sixth session in Bali, UNESCO's committee inscribed "Equitation in the French tradition" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. UNESCO describes it as a tradition built on non-violence, avoiding coercion and seeking lightness, and most closely associated with the Cadre Noir of Saumur. A 2020 paper in the journal Mondes du Tourisme, seen only as a summary, notes that the listing has struggled to reach riding communities beyond the Cadre Noir.

The Iberian schools

What our research found on the Iberian schools came only from search summaries, so all of it is unconfirmed except where noted. A summary of Wikipedia groups the Spanish Riding School, the Cadre Noir, the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art and the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art as the four most prestigious classical riding academies. A Horse and Hound summary says the Portuguese school was founded in 1979 by the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture. The Royal Andalusian school began as a private initiative of Alvaro Domecq Romero and is dated to 1973 in most of the summaries we saw. An Andalusian government decree (Decree 33/1989 of 20 February 1989) also says the school was born in 1973. A search summary of a reader post on the Chronicle of the Horse's forum mentions a re-founding in 1982; a forum post is not a reliable source and the decree does not mention 1982, so that date is unconfirmed.

From the court to the cavalry

The schools at Vienna and Saumur served courts and armies. The next step, from cavalry training to the Olympic disciplines, is on cavalry and the Olympic disciplines. How dressage is judged today is explained on the dressage page.