Olympic Stadium Berlin Deutschland stadio olimpico olimpiadi 1936

Описание: That Germany has chosen a place so freighted with symbolism to stage the World Cup final attests to how far it has come in confronting its past. Rather than build a new stadium, which would have cost less and catered to soccer fans, the Germans have reconstructed this landmark in a way that thoroughly modernizes it, while meticulously preserving its Nazi heritage.
"You can't overcome history by destroying it," said Volkwin Marg, a Hamburg architect whose firm oversaw the $283 million project. "We have to overcome our role in history by demonstrating it."
Germany, of course, will show off far more than this dark chapter of its past. Six months before the tournament begins, it is putting the finishing touches on $7 billion of construction projects throughout the country. It has built or refurbished 11 other stadiums, including an ultramodern new arena in Munich, with a translucent roof that looks like a quilted eggshell.
The World Cup will begin there on June 9 and unfold over a month in Leipzig, Hamburg, Frankfurt and other cities. With a million foreign visitors expected, it will be the largest sporting event since Germany's unification in 1990, and the most closely watched since the 1972 Munich Olympics.
With the facilities largely in place, Germany is turning its organizational skills to the less tangible aspects of being a good host. There are plans to stage an extravagant opening gala at the Olympic Stadium, with music supplied by the rock musicians Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno.
"The world expects Germany to be able to organize such a big event," said Wolfgang Niersbach, the executive vice president of the German organizing committee. "The important thing now is the atmosphere: what kind of host will we be? We want an atmosphere of hospitality."
But even here, history will play a part. André Heller, the Austrian impresario who is directing the gala, said he planned to make a reference to the stadium's Nazi history at some point during the festivities.
"This stadium was the set for Leni Riefenstahl's film," Heller said, referring to "Olympia," the famous documentary of the 1936 Games made by the female German filmmaker. "This was one of Hitler's great propaganda stages. We have to give an answer to that."
For the architects, the challenge was to transform a vast, decaying, mostly open-air arena, with rows of concrete benches, into a partly covered modern stadium, with roomy seats, luxury skyboxes, parking and a news-media center. They had to do this, while retaining the stadium's monumental design - perhaps the most enduring example of architecture from the Nazi period.
"It's like turning a Greek amphitheater into La Scala in Milan," said Marg, whose firm has designed stadiums in Cologne and Frankfurt, as well as the soaring new central train station in Berlin.
The centerpiece of the design is a spectacular steel-and-glass roof that shelters the seats but not the field. Like the stadium, it is not a closed ring, but remains open in front of the Marathon Gate. This enables spectators to see a bell tower that keeps watch over the stadium.
For engineering reasons, the gap necessitates a series of slender steel columns to support the roof - a design quirk that has drawn jibes from fans because it mars the view from some seats.
With its playing field sunken into the ground and the precise rows of pillars, the stadium evokes "a place of ancient drama or consecration," said Dieter Bartetzko, a German architecture critic.
Marg said he tried to remain faithful to that concept by tucking the skyboxes unobtrusively between the first and second section of seats. Hospitality suites, bars, restaurants and a private parking garage are hidden under the stadium. The news-media section is in what used to be a bunker.
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