Salle Saint-George and Acad­e­mia della Spada offer a range of classes. These classes are sep­a­rated into two gen­eral cat­e­gories, those of clas­si­cal fenc­ing arts and his­tor­i­cal fenc­ing arts.

Startup Fees & Equipment

Class fees are $70.00 a month with a small start-up fee for those stu­dents new to the school. Stu­dents will be pro­vided equip­ment when they first start. How­ever, for a look at our long term equip­ment and uni­form require­ments, click here.

Clas­si­cal Euro­pean Fencing

Clas­si­cal Euro­pean fenc­ing or what is con­sid­ered fencing’s “golden age” flour­ished dur­ing the 19th Cen­tury when the fenc­ing arts were highly sys­tem­atized, cod­i­fied, and thor­oughly doc­u­mented. Dur­ing this time, train­ing with the duel­ing sword and duel­ing sabre was con­ducted under seri­ous con­di­tions as if one were prepar­ing for the even­tu­al­ity of a duel. The prac­tice of foil, not tech­ni­cally con­sid­ered a weapon, allowed the art of fenc­ing to be devel­oped to a vir­tu­osic height, with an exact­ing focus placed on the per­fec­tion of form, grace of car­riage, flaw­less accu­racy and genius of execution.

While foil, duel­ing sword and duel­ing sabre were the three core weapons prac­ticed in the New World and in Euro­pean fenc­ing schools of the day, instruc­tion was not nec­es­sar­ily lim­ited to those three. Cane, great stick, bay­o­net, dag­ger, pugilism and in some instances, a few ear­lier his­tor­i­cal weapons (such as rapier) remained in the curriculum.

There are still a small num­ber of fenc­ing Mas­ters who come from liv­ing lin­eages dat­ing back to the clas­si­cal period and who con­tinue to teach these tra­di­tional sys­tems of fence.

His­tor­i­cal Euro­pean Fencing

His­tor­i­cal Euro­pean fenc­ing arts are those west­ern mar­tial arts reg­u­larly prac­ticed prior to the 19th Cen­tury when a sword or dag­ger was still worn as a com­mon sidearm. Today, when these arts are prac­ticed it is typ­i­cally as a recon­struc­tion of an ear­lier sys­tem of defense recorded in trea­tises from pre­vi­ous cen­turies informed by one’s under­stand­ing of fenc­ing the­ory, train­ing and practice.