manège

Manège enters English from French manège, which descends from Italian maneggio, the handling of a horse, from maneggiare, to handle, from mano, hand. The same Italian root gives English manage and management — to manège a horse is literally to handle it with the hands, through the reins. A manège is both the enclosed arena and the system of training conducted within it.

Renaissance Italian riding masters — Frederico Grisone, Giambattista Della Valle — established the principles of manège riding in the sixteenth century, describing how to use the enclosed arena to teach horses collection, submission, and the movements of haute école. The manège was a controlled environment: the walls curved the horse's path, the footing was consistent, distractions were minimal. It was laboratory as much as arena.

In Britain, the word gave rise to carousel's forerunner: early mechanical fairground rides were called manèges in French, because they made horses move in the same controlled circles as the riding school. The fairground carousel, with its painted horses traveling endlessly around a fixed center, is the manège's mechanical descendant. The connection was noted and used — the rides were sold as miniature versions of the noble art of riding.

Modern equestrian usage distinguishes a manège (the enclosed arena, typically 20 by 40 or 20 by 60 meters) from a manège in the older sense of the complete system of classical training. Both senses remain current. A rider who books a manège for schooling and a historian describing Renaissance horsemanship are using the same word for different aspects of the same tradition.