Does the San Siro need to go?

Does Milan’s San Siro need to be demolished?   Edwin Heathcote reviews the evidence from an architectural perspective in the Financial Times.

Milan’s San Siro stadium is one of football’s great spectacles. Part of it is the atmosphere during a game, especially one of the Madonnina matches, the fierce derbies between the two teams that call the stadium home, AC Milan and Inter. But it is also the incredible sight of the architecture after a match, when the fans descending the huge concrete circulation cylinders create the dizzying impression of a building swirling around them, as if the whole structure is spinning in response. 

The Madonnina is named after the gilded statue of the Virgin that stands atop Milan’s Duomo. The San Siro is far bigger than even that huge gothic cathedral and, together with La Scala opera house, the three constitute a kind of trinity of revered Milanese monuments. Unlike the other two, however, the San Siro looks likely to be demolished. 

Both AC Milan and Inter are owned by US investment firms (Red Bird Capital Partners and Oaktree Capital Management respectively) and they joined forces to buy the site from Milan city council for €197mn in 2025, with plans to build a new stadium. When I visited last month, everything was quiet. The stadium loomed like the concrete monster it is, its barber-pole columns and red beams looking oddly toylike.

The argument is that the stadium — which was inaugurated in 1926, expanded in 1955 and took its current form in 1990 — is no longer fit for purpose. With a capacity of almost 76,000 it is one of the largest stadiums in Europe. Unlike big modern stadiums, however, such as Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium or Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, it has vanishingly little in the way of retail or catering and even less provision for VIPs.  That is where it falls down.

Football today is an extractive industry, geared not to fans but to big money and corporate interests. Revenue from match-day ticket sales is dwarfed by broadcast rights, commercial and merchandising income. The stadium has become primarily a set, a backdrop where fans can wonder if they are there only to provide noisy atmosphere for TV viewers.

Yet the San Siro remains a special place. It was initially designed in the British style, with the terraces coming right up to the pitch and without a running track between them, so it is both intimate and theatrical. In fact, there is another British link: AC Milan was founded in 1899 (as the Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club) by Herbert Kilpin, who also designed the team’s famous black-and-red striped kit.

Kilpin, from Nottingham, was then working in Milan’s textile industry. (Over in Turin, incidentally, Juventus started playing in the colours of Nottingham team Notts County after receiving a shipment from the club, and its players wear the black and white stripes to this day.) 

The stadium (officially known as the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza) was last updated for the 1990 Fifa World Cup. It was then that architects Giancarlo Ragazzi and Enrico Hoffer, with engineer Leo Finzi, completed its current incarnation with the massive cylindrical towers supporting an extra tier above the existing two.

The top level appears almost to overhang the pitch. It is this level that has the largest capacity and the best views (including, from up top, across the city). The sweeping curves create an effect that is as much Roman amphitheatre as football ground. Above all this is a grid of steel supporting a roof held up on four massive red trusses that cantilever out beyond the perimeters and evoke a Japanese temple in their strange tectonics. There really is nothing like this stadium anywhere in the world of football or beyond. 

The suspicion might be that the real reason for demolition and replacement is VIP accommodation. The San Siro lacks the barrage of luxury dining and boxes typical of the big Premier League clubs or US stadiums (albeit it does have a fair number). And Uefa rules for hosting top-tier football are nothing if not assiduous in their demands for luxury. Currently the San Siro is that rare thing: a deeply democratic stadium.

There is serious opposition within the city council and among fans, both in Milan and well beyond. A key factor in the demolition and replacement also seems to have been plans by the Italian Regional Commission for Cultural Heritage to obtain listed status for the second-tier ramps, dating from the 1950s, which would have scuppered the clubs’ plans.

Opposition councillors representing Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party has called for the annulment of the sale in light of bid-rigging allegations and demanded the resignation of the mayor, Giuseppe Sala, over the matter. Speaking on the sidelines of a public event in Milan last month, Sala, who has previously denied wrongdoing, said the motion would “come to nothing”, adding that the city administration had no intention of reversing course on the sale.

Global football is a steamroller and it will flatten everything in its path for profit. But occasionally it comes up against a monument too tough to be beaten. Might the San Siro be one of those?