Lipica, Slovenia

Lipica, Slovenia — home since AD 1580 of the famous Lipizzaner white horses. The breed itself takes its name from this very place, founded as an imperial stud farm by Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria, who crossed Spanish, Arabian and Italian bloodlines to create a compact, powerful and intelligent horse fit for the royal courts of Europe.

One of the breed’s most enchanting characteristics is that the horses are not born white at all. Lipizzaner foals arrive dark — black, bay or brown — and lighten gradually over six to ten years until they reach their celebrated grey-white coat. By tradition a single bay Lipizzaner is always kept among the greys, and is considered a bringer of good fortune.

The horses are known for their disciplined showmanship and unique style of display riding, and are famously associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Austria — the oldest such institution in the world, where the art of classical horsemanship has been preserved for over four centuries. There the stallions demonstrate the ‘high school’ movements of classical dressage: the collected trot of the piaffe, flying changes, and the graceful controlled steps of haute école.

Most spectacular of all are the ‘airs above the ground’ — the school jumps in which the horse leaves the earth entirely. In the levade the stallion balances motionless on deeply bent hind legs; in the courbette it hops forward on its hindquarters with forelegs tucked beneath; and in the capriole — reckoned the hardest movement in all of dressage — it leaps into the air and kicks out behind at the height of the jump. These demanding feats, once battlefield manoeuvres, are mastered by only a few exceptional stallions after six to eight years of patient training, and reveal the extraordinary trust between horse and rider.

From this quiet corner of the Slovenian Karst, the White Horses of Lipica have carried their grace and discipline to arenas across the world — living heritage, and one of the great equestrian traditions of Europe.