Spanish Riding School, Dressage.com

The Spanish Riding School of Vienna
The True Miracle of the White Stallions
1939 - 1955

The True Miracle
of the White Stallions

Spanish
Riding School

Sankt Martin Im Innkreis
By John D’Addamio

The Disney movie, The Miracle of the White Stallions depicts scenes of the Spanish Riding School’s time at Schloß St. Martin Im Innkreis. While the film was made on location in Austria, the St. Martin scenes were filmed at the Hermes Villa in Lainzer Tiergarten. The Lainzer Tiergarten is a nature park in the Vienna Woods region which surrounds Vienna. The Hermes Villa palace was built in the late 19^th century. Today, it is a museum. The exterior of the Hermes Villa palace and stables should look familiar to anyone who has seen the movie.

When planning a trip to Austria, my wife and I decided to tour the provinces of Austria by staying in vacation hotels that offered trail riding. The tour took us from the Bürgenland resort town of Neusiedl to Steiermark (Styria) and the Piber Federal Stud and then to Oberösterreich (Upper Austria). We stayed in Zipf, Upper Austria was only about 40 kilometers from St. Martin im Innkreis, the village to which Podhajsky took the Spanish Riding School at the end of World War II. Naturally, we had to try to find the village and Schloß St. Martin, the castle where the School was actually housed. The village is on the map and it looked like an easy trip.

The Innkreis is a region in the northwest corner of Austria where the Inn River joins the Danube. The countryside near the Inn River, from which the district takes its name, is beautiful: rolling hills and fertile farmland. Except for a few minutes being lost in the town of Reid, where an intersection wasn't marked, we found St. Martin easily. But, we had no idea where the castle was located! We needn't have worried. The castle is situated on the main street, situated on a corner!

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