Modern Day

At the beginning of 2001 the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and the Federal Stud Piber in Syria were separated from the federal administration and made legally independent whereby the establishment is still wholly owned by the Austrian Federation. The two entities were merged into one legal company and a special Spanish Riding School Act charged the establishment with fulfilling certain duties for the public benefit. These include above all the continuation of the traditional breeding of Lipizzaners, the rearing and provision of prime stallions for the Spanish Riding School and the pursuance and preservation of the High School of Classical Horsemanship

The Piber stud and Piber castle are marketed together as tourist attractions. Visitors can watch training sessions with the horses in the riding arena, visit the stables, and take part in special programs for children. There are also cultural and musical events in the castle courtyard, which has excellent acoustics. Carriage rides are available, and the baroque buildings on the ground are available for concerts, festivals and weddings.

Since 2005, the school stallions spend their summer in Heldenberg near Vienna, in Lower Austria. This current summer stable will be expanded into a new year-round facility to provide additional capacity for training more young Lipizzaner stallions in the Haute École of Classical Dressage than has been possible in the past.

All horses, except the young stallions, wear red and gold or green and gold shabracks, or saddlecloths, under the saddle. Red is for "All Steps and Movements of the High School", "Pas de Deux", "On the Long Rein", "The Grand Solo" and "The School quadrille." Green is used for "Work In-Hand" and the "Airs above the Ground". The shabrack is also used to differentiate the status of each rider: the director of the school has three gold bands and gold fringe, the chief riders have three bands and no fringe, riders have two bands, and assistant riders have one.

The young stallions are not exhibited in the same equipment as the more mature animals. They are ridden in a plain snaffle bridle and a simple dressage-style english saddle. For training sessions, black bridles, both snaffle bit bridles and double bridles, are used for all horses. Horses are clean and well groomed. The Capriole horses wear a braided tail wrapped short in a "queue" (known elsewhere as a "mud tail"), which is fixed with a decorative tail bag (Schweiftasche).

All riders wear the traditional uniform: a brown tailcoat, a bicorne-style hat, white buckskin breeches, white suede gloves, and black top riding boots. Swan neck spurs are also part of the uniform. The empire style uniform (1795–1820 in fashion) has remained relatively unchanged for 200 years. During performances, the fully trained stallions wear a traditional gold-plated breastplate and crupper, called a Goldzeug. They also carry a "school saddle", which is made from buckskin and larger than the more commonly seen English saddle used by the school when training the stallions and riders. Gold-plated double bridles are only used for performances.