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Fifteen centuries of suspension

During the IV century AD, the importance of sports practice was considerably reassessed all over the ancient world, which unavoidably affected the development of sports facilities.

After Christian cult was legitimized by Constantine Edict, the Council of Arles held in 314 imposed a ban on the circus charioteers, actually banning the pagan practice of chariot racing and thus speeding up the conversion of circuses into non-sports public facilities. Similarly in 394, when Greece had been under the Roman rule for a long time, an edict promulgated by the emperor Theodosius who accepted the request made by Milan bishop Ambrose led to the abolition of the Olympic Games, which were regarded as a pagan rite contrary to religious rites.

Therefore shifted to new building typologies such as churches and cathedrals, castles, fortifications, towers and municipal palaces which became peculiar elements of Medieval towns and of their development. Sports activities were seldom and limited. The ancient Greek and Roman sports buildings were progressively abandoned. Many of them were converted into markets or houses, others were fully pulled down to reuse building materials.

Sports practice was given a new boost during the Renaissance when running events and equestrian events were reintroduced. However they did not take place in specific facilities, but usually in areas serving other purposes, in large open spaces or in the squares, which were often provided with wooden tiers and small temporary roofs for the most important spectators.

Piazza del Campo in Siena and its Palio horse race are the most important case that is still popular nowadays, while in Firenze in Piazza Santa Croce the forerunners of modern football used to play in teams made up of 27 members each without any rule, but the one to throw the ball into the goal of the opposite team.

Sports were properly defined a few centuries later, in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, which also saw the setting up of the first clubs and sports federations. The enthusiasm for the new sports, football and rugby in particular, quickly grew in Great Britain, where in the cities in which population had dramatically grown due to the urbanization process resulting from the Industrial Revolution people soon felt the need to build new facilities that could welcome a high number of fans.

In the same years the revival of the Olympic Games, proposed in 1894 by the French baron Pierre de Coubertin, sanctioned the final importance of sport in the modern age and symbolically marked the start of a new age of stadia.

The modern age

Modern Olympic Games were inspired by Greece and by the model of stadion, this time Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, which was brought to light by the excavations dating back to the Eighteenth century and which was rebuilt keeping its elongated "U" shape prior to the first Games held in 1896.

The models of the Greek and Roman sports facilities rediscovered in the Neoclassical age turned into the reference prototypes for the first modern stadia, triggering off an evolutionary process that starting from Great Britain at the end of the Nineteenth century and still under way, spread in all continents in parallel with technological innovations and often linked with Olympic Games and Football World Cups.



So far the technological evolution is almost one century and a half long. On the basis of the peculiar aspects that have marked the different stages, partly drawing on the theoretical analysis made by Rod Sheard (read note 1), five "generations" of stadia can be identified. These are generations marking the steps of a faster and faster development with many stadia, fully renovated or rebuilt over time, that have gone through more stages of this evolutionary process.

The first stadium

First-generation stadia were like huge hotchpotches whose purpose was basically to host a large amount of spectators in an age when there was no television and sports events could be watched just live.

Particularly in the first years, they were facilities with no architectural value, uncomfortable and the provision of facilities was basic. Tiers were made of concrete or just with the arrangement of embankments standing and often crammed into the stands, with the exception of some small seating stand, sometimes also provided with a small roof for the most important spectators. Their extension was usually disorderly and non-homogeneous, in order to satisfy the increasing demand for seating areas by the spectators.

This model was introduced in Great Britain as football facility with the typical rectilinear stands running parallel to the sides of the pitch and was soon adapted to the model of the Olympic stadium with continuous tiers running along the perimeter of the athletics track. The White City stadium, now pulled down, was the first example during the Games of London 1908.

Alongside with the passion for football, these models were exported from Great Britain to the rest of Europe and to South America. They often featured the Marathon Tower, which made them easily identifiable in the city environment. This first generation of stadia took different forms until the end of the Fifties, when they had to be confronted with a sudden reduction in the number of spectators. (read note 2)


Date: 2016-03-03; view: 729


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