Equestrian Art in Portugal

Equestrian art in Portugal — often called Portuguese Equestrian Art — is a form of classical horsemanship that combines functionality and aesthetics in a relationship of harmony and respect between rider and horse, conducted without recourse to force and centred on the animal’s well-being. It is distinguished by the rider’s characteristic seat in the saddle, by traditional tack and costume, and by a repertoire of movements inherited from court riding.

In December 2024, the 19th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, meeting in Asunción (Paraguay), inscribed this practice on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (decision 19.COM 7.b.2, reference 02079). It thus became one of the elements of Portugal’s intangible cultural heritage recognised internationally, alongside Fado and Cante Alentejano.

A tradition codified in the eighteenth century

The roots of this practice lie in centuries of Portuguese equestrian tradition, but its classical form was consolidated in the second half of the eighteenth century. Its scholarly core is academic horsemanship, cultivated at the Picaria Real, the equestrian academy of the Portuguese court in the 18th and early 19th centuries. D. Pedro de Alcântara de Meneses, 4th Marquis of Marialva and chief equerry to D. José I, played a decisive role in its refinement. From his influence came the expression “montar à Marialva” (riding in the manner of Marialva), still used today to designate the Portuguese style. Its principles were set down in writing by Manuel Carlos de Andrade in the work Luz da Liberal e Nobre Arte da Cavallaria (1790), one of the reference treatises of European horsemanship.

Closed in the nineteenth century, the Picaria Real left as its legacy a high-school (alta-escola) knowledge that survived in stud farms, bullrings and the traditions of mounted bullfighting. The practice is further distinguished by its traditional costume and its own tack, different from that of other schools, and includes variants such as monte à amazona, practised exclusively by women on a side-saddle.

Portuguese equestrian art does not seek to dominate the horse, but to converse with it: obedience is the fruit of communication and collaboration, never of coercion.

The Portuguese School of Equestrian Art

The court’s legacy is today preserved above all by the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art (EPAE), founded in 1979 and housed since 1996 at the Queluz National Palace, where it gives public performances and training sessions in the riding arenas and historic gardens. The school deliberately maintains the same type of horse, the same embroidered tack and the same eighteenth-century costumes of the Picaria Real, functioning as a living guardian of an aesthetic and a technique that date back to the Ancien Régime.

The art lies in achieving maximum elegance and precision with minimum constraint: the rider does not impose the movements, but suggests them, and the horse performs them as if they arose from its own will.

The Lusitano horse

At the centre of this tradition is the Puro-Sangue Lusitano, an autochthonous breed prized for its suppleness, agility, docility and readiness to respond to the rider’s aids — qualities indispensable to the movements of high-school riding. The Coudelaria de Alter lineage, founded in 1748 in Alter do Chão, in the Upper Alentejo, supplies the horses that the EPAE directly associates with the court’s legacy.

The breeding, selection and handling of these animals are therefore an inseparable part of the heritage element, and involve a broad community of breeders, veterinarians, herdsmen (campinos) and artisans who produce saddles, tack and costumes, ensuring the continuity of the practice.

A scholarly and popular tradition

The practice is not confined to scholarly riding arenas. A source of collective identity, it also lives on in pilgrimages, fairs and popular festivals — notably the Feira Nacional do Cavalo (National Horse Fair) in Golegã — as well as in riding centres and cattle estates scattered across the country. Knowledge is passed on through academies, schools and riding centres, in Portugal and in more than twenty countries, complemented by treatises, books and manuals.

A recognition built in stages

The nomination process, begun in 2015, was the result of a partnership between the Associação Portuguesa de Criadores do Cavalo Puro-Sangue Lusitano, Parques de Sintra — Monte da Lua, which manages the EPAE, and the municipality of Golegã. In 2021, equestrian art was integrated into the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a step required by Portuguese legislation for any application to the 2003 Convention and a prerequisite for international inscription.

More than a spectacle, the distinction honours a know-how transmitted across generations, in which technique, animal breeding and historical memory remain inseparable. Alongside other living expressions such as falconry and cante alentejano, equestrian art reinforces Portugal’s presence in the UNESCO World and Intangible Heritage.