Spanish Riding School Guided Tour Vienna

The Winter Riding School: the Baroque hall of the Lipizzaners

The Winter Riding School is the heart of the tour and the reason most people search for a Spanish Riding School Vienna tour in the first place. Built between 1729 and 1735 as part of the Hofburg, it is a pure white Baroque hall lined with two tiers of galleries on columns, lit by crystal chandeliers and overlooked by a portrait of the emperor who commissioned it, to whom the riders still raise their hats. The sand floor measures about 55 by 18 metres, and here the morning exercise and gala performances take place.

On the guided tour you stand on the floor of the empty hall, a far better look at the architecture than a seat in the gallery, and your guide explains the figures of the Haute Ecole, from the piaffe and passage to the leaps of the levade and capriole, and how each stallion spends years learning them. Photography is not allowed, so this is a place to look rather than to film.

The Summer Riding School and the horse walker

Behind the Baroque hall lies the Summer Riding School, an open courtyard within the Hofburg where the stallions are exercised in warm weather and where the tour continues outdoors. Its most striking feature is the large oval horse walker, a covered circuit in which the horses walk and trot without a rider as part of their daily routine; the guide explains how this fits into a stallion's schedule of training, rest and turnout.

The courtyard also shows the practical side of the institution: the tack, the care of the horses and the quiet, repetitive work that lies behind a performance. For anyone wondering what a behind-the-scenes tour in Vienna actually includes, this is the part that visitors who only attend a performance never see. It is a short stop of a few minutes before the group moves on through the passages of the Hofburg to the stables.

The Stallburg: Renaissance stables of the stallions

The Stallburg is a separate palace across the Reitschulgasse, built between 1558 and 1565 and widely regarded as the most important Renaissance building in Vienna. Its three-storey arcaded courtyard, with rows of open arches on every level, was first intended as a residence and was converted to stables for the imperial horses in the following century. Today it houses the Lipizzaner stallions when they are in the city, each in a spacious box opening onto the arcades.

The Lipizzaner stables tour section is the favourite of most visitors: you walk along the boxes, see the stallions up close and learn how the breed, founded in 1580 at the stud of Lipica, is born dark and turns white as the horses mature. The guide explains the names on each stall, the daily feeding and the yearly move to summer pastures. Children aged 3 and over are welcome, and the stables are usually the part they remember.

Michaelerplatz and the Hofburg: around the riding school

The tour starts and ends on Michaelerplatz, the round square in front of the Michaelertor, the great domed gateway into the Hofburg. The square is itself a sight: Roman ruins exposed in its centre, St Michael's Church on one side and the elegant shopping streets of Kohlmarkt and Graben leading away to St Stephen's Cathedral, about 5 minutes on foot. Getting to the Spanish Riding School is simple: Herrengasse station on the U3 is a few steps away, and Stephansplatz is a short walk.

After the tour you are inside the largest palace complex in Vienna, so the Imperial Apartments, the Imperial Treasury, the National Library's State Hall and the Heldenplatz are all a few minutes away. If you want to see the stallions in motion, the morning exercise and the performances in the Winter Riding School are separate tickets, and the best plan is to attend one of them on another morning and take this guided tour in the afternoon.