Stadio Flaminio
Having hosted sporting and cultural events for many decades after its construction, the Stadio Flaminio, although it closed in 2011, managed to avoid demolition and is currently awaiting refurbishment.
One of six venues built specially for the Olympic Games Rome 1960, the Stadio Flaminio hosted group and knockout matches in the men’s football tournament, including the gold-medal match. Built on the site of a stadium used at the 1934 FIFA World Cup, the Stadio Flaminio opened in 1959 and had a capacity of 50,000 at the time. It also featured a heated indoor pool, a fencing gym and wrestling, weightlifting and boxing facilities. Its engineering is a prime example of the ingenious use of reinforced concrete and the unique style of Italian architecture of the day.
In the decades that followed, it served as a major concert venue – hosting the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd – and as a temporary home for Rome’s top football clubs, AS Roma and SS Lazio. The two Serie A teams spent a season there, while the Stadio Olimpico underwent renovation in preparation for the 1990 FIFA World Cup.
The Italian national rugby team took up residence at the stadium in 2000, playing its home matches in the Six Nations Championship there. The venue’s capacity of 32,000 was small by the tournament’s standards, however, and plans were drawn up for its expansion. When they fell through, Italy left the stadium at the end of the 2011 season and have since played their home matches at the Stadio Olimpico. Currently unoccupied and requiring attention since its closure, the Stadio Flaminio is showing signs of wear and tear that would benefit from restoration efforts.
In recent years, the stadium has been the subject of several plans for partial or total demolition to make way for car parks or shopping centres. All of these have been rejected, however. In June 2017, an interdisciplinary research team consisting of specialists and scholars from the Sapienza University of Rome, the Pier Luigi Nervi Project Association and Do.Co.Mo.Mo. Italy were successful in their application for the Keeping It Modern international grant promoted by the Getty Foundation. In 2020, the team published a conservation plan. The primary objectives of the team in producing this plan were to provide the Municipality of Rome with a tool to promote, support and guide the recovery of the building, serve as a model for the development of best practices, and encourage the listing of the Stadio Flaminio (a feat they achieved with the listing of the stadium on 27 September 2018). The three-phase renovation plan, which was drawn up by the Engineering Department at Sapienza University and unveiled in October 2020, aims to drive the regeneration of the Olympic Village and the entire Flaminio district as part of a wider urban redevelopment project. The project estimated that the redevelopment of the stadium will cost EUR 80 million.