Mestalla Stadium
Steeply raked football stadium rebuilt from civil-war ruin, among Europe's steepest terraces.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Mestalla Stadium in Valencia opens with the single grandstand left standing after the Spanish Civil War, when the ground was requisitioned as a concentration camp and stripped for scrap. It follows the local architects who rebuilt a stadium out of that ruin, fast enough for Valencia to win a league title by nineteen forty-one. The guide also turns to a very different kind of crisis under a later owner, one fought with balance sheets rather than barbed wire. Look up at the terrace's steep incline, among the steepest in European football, built to bring the noise close.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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