Olympiastadion: a dark history but a bright future

Hallo zusammen!

Last week our students had a guided tour of the Berlin Olympiastadion,  a sports stadium in Berlin, Germany that was built for the 1936 Olympic Games. Nowadays the stadium is the home ground from Hertha BSC, Berlin’s most famous football team. The Olympiastadion is such an unusual place for the mixture of its dark history and its brilliant present. This is why a visit to the Olympiastadion is such an interesting one.
 

A breif history and some facts we learned on our tour:

- Olympiastadion Berlin is the largest stadium in Germany!

-Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of the Olympiastadion as a sports complex in what was called the Reichssportfeld. This sports complex was designed by architect Werner March and assisted by his brother Walter.

-Olympiastadion is  designed as a buried stadium. So, from outside, the stadium looks smaller than from the inside. It’s a fascinating effect caused by the fact that it was built 12 meters below ground level. But don’t think that the Olympiastadion is small in any way. When it was built, the stadium reached 110,000 spectators! 

-During the Berlin Summer Olympics in 1936, the Olympiastadion was the stage for Jesse Owens and his four gold medals in the long jump and sprint events. This made him the most successful athlete in Berlin!

-Before the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, FIFA decided the Olympiastadion as one of its venues. Restoration work started soon after and, in July 2000, renovation work began and lasted until July 2004.

-Today you can visit the Olympiastadion for a guided tour, a concert, a sports game, or to take a swim in the public pool!