Milan — San Siro, the Derby della Madonnina & the City That Lives for Football

The Stadium

San Siro — A Century of Football History

Stadio Giuseppe Meazza — universally known as San Siro — opened on 19 September 1926 when 35,000 spectators watched Inter defeat Milan 6–3 in the stadium’s very first match. It was the vision of Piero Pirelli, then-president of AC Milan and son of the legendary tire manufacturer, who insisted on a pure football stadium — no athletics track, no civic compromises. Modelled on English grounds, it was designed to do one thing only: make football feel absolute.

Renovated three times — in 1939, 1955, and massively in 1990 for the FIFA World Cup, whose opening match was held here — San Siro acquired its iconic silhouette: eleven external cylindrical towers with spiralling ramps, a cantilevered roof covering all 75,000 seats, and the four coloured stands (red and orange down the sides, green and blue behind the goals) that make the stadium unmistakable from the air. It hosted the Champions League Final in 1965, 1970, 2001, and 2016. It is a UEFA Elite category stadium — one of fewer than twenty in the world.

Since 1947, San Siro has been the shared home of both AC Milan and Inter Milan — a fact that makes it unique among the great European stadiums. On Derby della Madonnina nights, the stadium is split down the middle: red and black on the south curve, blue and black on the north. The noise is something that visitors describe for years afterwards.