Lipica: visiting the birthplace of the Lipizzaner, four centuries on

Lipica is barely a village, a few kilometres from the Italian border in the Karst – but it gave its name to an entire breed of horse, and the stud farm founded here in 1580 by Archduke Charles II of Austria is still breeding them on the same ground. Every Lipizzaner in the world, including the stallions that perform at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, traces its line back to this one place.

What there actually is to see

The stud farm runs guided tours of the stables and paddocks, timed around the horses' own routine rather than a fixed script – newborn foals in spring, young horses being schooled through the summer, the older stallions kept separately. A tour takes about an hour and a half and walks past working stables, not a museum display: the horses living there are the ones that will go on to breed or perform.

The dressage shows

On a fixed schedule through the summer season, and less often outside it, the stud farm puts on a classical dressage display in its own arena – the same discipline the horses were bred for centuries ago. It is worth checking the current calendar before planning a visit around it specifically, since outside the show days you will see the horses in the stables and paddocks rather than performing.

Why they are white

Lipizzaners are actually born dark – bay or black – and lighten to the grey-white most people picture over five or six years, as the colour genes that make the breed famous gradually take over. A foal born in the year of a visit will still be dark; the white horses in the photographs are the breed's older generation, not a different one.

Getting there

Lipica sits close enough to the coast that it fits naturally into a day aimed at Piran and Portorož, with the stud farm as a stop on the way rather than the whole day's plan – add roughly an hour each way to a coastal transfer to work it in. It is also one of the closer stops for a cruise call at Koper, nearer to the port than Ljubljana is.

That is the fare for a dedicated transfer. Built into a coastal day – Piran, Portorož, Lipica and back – the marginal cost of the detour is the extra hour of driving, not a second fare.