A quasi-religion, soccer is the world’s sport. It possesses beauty in its simplicity: 11 versus 11, two goal nets and one elusive ball — this is all that is needed to create a symphony of magic. Amid the sport’s deep history, Italy stands tall. Distinguished by five World Cups, two European Championships, and a population born with a ball at their feet and a rosary in their hands, Italy has been football-mad since calcio first arrived at its doors in the late 1800s. 

Perhaps no greater tribute to this madness exists than the titanic San Siro, a stadium shared by two of the country’s biggest teams and arch rivals, AC Milan and Inter Milan. Since its inception, the arena has been through many transformations. Unlike many North American stadiums, located in suburbs, San Siro is known not only for its vast size and architectural power but also for its location in Milan’s west end, near the city’s pulse. Yet the stadium’s days remain numbered. After having been saved from demolition by the Lombardy Regional Commission for Cultural Heritage, which argued the stadium should remain for its cultural value beyond the sport, its fate still hangs in the balance. 

Both of its tenant clubs have made plans to build a modern replacement where the brutalist landmark now stands. Reports in October 2025 that Milan City Council officially approved the sale of the site and surrounding area to AC Milan and Inter Milan signalled the final nail in the coffin. The clubs’ new stadium (designed by Foster & Partners and MANICA) is set to be built by 2031.

Fillipo Iemmolo, one of the founders of OFFside Fest Italia, a non-profit film festival celebrating independent works about the beautiful game, has spent his entire life admiring San Siro up close. With an older brother and father that bled blue and black, the Milan native had no real choice but to support Inter Milan. “My family are all Interisti, especially my father and brother. I was six years old when I was first brought to the stadium. It was a game between Atalanta and Inter — 5-2 for Inter,” Iemmolo says with a smile. “I fell in love with football, Inter, and San Siro in that order, so for me football is a question of family.”

The sport is often a right of passage, fans often selecting their teams for factors such as geography, family ties or even class. Inter Milan, or Internazionale, was founded in 1908 out of a splinter group of AC Milan fans when internal arguments over allowing foreign players into the team escalated into an incurable difference. In the early days, Inter Milan had an allegiance towards Italian bourgeois society, with their fans being nicknamed Bauscia (big-shot), while AC Milan was for the working class, with their fans being nicknamed Casciavit (screwdriver) — both slang terms in the Milanese dialect. 

Over the years, these characterizations became less prominent, and Iemmolo says they have now completely disappeared. “In the modern age, this difference doesn’t exist anymore. But I think in its place there is a new difference between the teams. In the last 30 years, AC Milan has won a lot, especially Champions League titles, so their fans that are more proud, happy and optimistic,” he says. “Meanwhile, Inter fans are more pessimistic, and sad — but in many ways I feel it’s more romantic to cheer for Inter. Only in the last few years have the teams got back to being on equal terms.” The rivalry is one of the most successful in the sport, producing 87 domestic and 21 European titles between the two clubs over their history. 

San Siro has been the theatre where this rivalry has played out. Built in the 1920s by architect Ulisse Stacchini, it had an original capacity of 35,000 and was home solely to AC Milan. Inter Milan officially became a co-tenant after the Second World War. Not only is it a landmark institution for the two clubs that share it and an architectural marvel beyond that — it has also hosted legendary cultural events: Bob Marley’s 1980 concert, his biggest ever, saw a 120,000-strong dancing on San Siro’s green grass. “San Siro is a monument. It has a history that’s lasted over a hundred years and is a fundamental part of Milan. For me, it’s a place where I think of football but for many others it means different things. Even tourists who have no interest in the sport will still come to watch a game because the experience is one anyone can enjoy,” Iemmolo says.

Architecturally, San Siro stands out for its iconic red roof beams that jut out beyond their truss framework, its four cylindrical corner towers that touch the roof and lend a sense of decoration to every side of the structure, its tympanum entrances and its three-level tiers that can be divided into four sections of seating. The second row on the south side long been reserved for the Curva Sud, the most passionate of AC Milan super-fans — known in the sport as Ultras — while the opposite side is reserved for the Curva Nord, the Inter Ultras. These fans are responsible for much of the heightened atmosphere of soccer matches; they put on coordinated routines of loud chants, drums, and banners, culminating in a roar when the stadium is filled to its over 75,000 modern-day capacity. 

“The sensation is similar to being in Gladiator, almost 100,000 people all in one place. It doesn’t happen too often in life. You raise your head and you see a wall of people above you. It’s incredible,” Iemmolo says. 

Antonio Cunazza, an architectural photographer and journalist at Sport&impianti, is a Torino native and a supporter of that city’s club (he’s a season-ticket holder), yet San Siro is special to him, too. “Stadiums like San Siro have either been or are planned to be demolished and replaced, so it’s really one of the last of its kind. It was the second stadium I went to as a kid, in 1992,” Cunazza says. “I remember everything about that place amazed me — I was a bit frightened, too, but I was enormously moved by being there. My seat was in the third tier — so quite far from the pitch — but I felt it all the same.”   

On the last match day of the 2001-2002 season, Peter Sealy, an architectural historian and assistant professor at John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, was among those in the stands to watch a game between AC Milan and U.S. Lecce. With AC Milan in fifth place and comfortably out of title contention, and U.S. Lecce still lower on the rungs at 16th, one could be forgiven for thinking the match held no significance. Yet it turned into an important day for AC Milan fans: Inter Milan were poised to win their first league title since 1989 if they beat SS Lazio — but they went on to lose the game (4-2) and their championship aspirations alongside it. This lit a fire for the fans of their rivals. “It was the last day of the season. Inter had a chance to win the title — they didn’t, and the AC Milan fans were going crazy with happiness,” Sealy says. 

Since then he’s been back to the stadium multiple times and considers it his absolute favourite in the world. “It’s a famous piece of architectural heritage. I just remember its spiralling ramps, which are really visible. A lot of North American stadiums don’t have that sort of defining architecture feature.” These unique helicoidal ramps create an optical illusion of movement when masses of fans exit the stadium, thanks to their downward-winding design. 

Although its future demolition is more settled than not as of now, efforts to keep San Siro alive had been numerous and continuous throughout the years. In 2019, Stefano Boeri Architetti proposed to turn the stadium and its surrounding area into a green haven that includes public and semi-public services, such as a hotel, a 4.5-hectare public park, and shopping centre. And while the teams have pointed to its poor condition and outdated design as a rationale for replacing it completely, it is a truly one of a kind structure, full of embodied cultural memory.

“In Italy, I think we learned the value of the San Siro with time. It’s a hundred years old this year and it’s been through so much evolution in terms of its architecture and dimensions,” Cunazza says. “In some ways it was parallel to the transformation and evolution of our society.”