Frankfurt Stadium

The Frankfurt Stadium in was formerly built as the Waldstadion in 1925. Among the national socialists in the thirties, the Waldstadion was also used for political meetings such as deployments and assemblies, with up to 150,000 participants.

After the Second World War, the Waldstadion was seized by American soldiers, renamed in "Victory Stadium," and used for own purposes. However, in July 1946, it was released again for German meetings.

Sporty high points of the post-war period were the German Leichtathletik championships in 1946 and in 1955, high class soccer events as well as gripping box fights with Max Schmeling vs. Werner Vollmer in 1947 or Muhammad Ali vs. Karl Mildenberger in 1966.

After the chaos match in 1953, the city Frankfurt decided the first comprehensive modernization of the Frankfurt Stadium. It was a match where nearly 70,000 tickets were sold for the main combat course that was designed for just 55,000 fans. Thousands fans obtained admittance by force so it came to fights with more than 200 injured.

The second conversion took place for the Fifa World Cup 1974 that was hosted in Germany as well. What followed were amazing soccer events, Leichtathletik Championships and... very exciting concerts of Madonna (1987), Prince (1988), Rolling Stones (1990), Tina Turner (1990) and Michael Jackson.

Today, the Frankfurt Stadium is called Commerzbank Arena and has been remodelled the third time. This time for the Fifa World Cup 2006, and for 48,132 fans. It is located south the Main river in the Frankfurt city forest between Frankfurt airport, Frankfurt Niederrad and Neu Isenburg.

Main users of the Commerzbank Arena now are the Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt and the American football team Frankfurt Galaxy in the NFL Europe.

It now is considered as the "World's Largest Convertible" because of its architectural highlight -- the lockable roof, which can be completely folded up into the video cube that centrally hung up over the playing field. The 8400 square meters large roof structure is twelve tons heavy and hangs on 220 fastening spots of the roping rising up work, which spans spectator ranks. The interior roof consists of polyester tissue.

However, unforgotten is a leakage in the roof, by which within the range of a eckfahne a fall brook pours. The leakage is attributed to a duly not accomplished spanning of the roof stretcher work, why the rain water in a hollow collects itself and finally flows off by an overflow valve.