Chasing Parade Grounds, Fairs, and Small Arenas. An Unexpected Urban Tale
An unpublished Urban tale by architect and writer Gianni Biondillo
Fondazione Fiera Milano
Text of Gianni Biondillo
Veduta aerea dello stadio Giuseppe Meazza di Milano nel 1957 (12/04/1957 - 27/04/1957) by Non identificatoFondazione Fiera Milano
I remember San Siro before it had a third tier
I was just a kid, and it was my first time at the stadium. To be honest, I can’t recall the exact match. But I can picture myself, bundled up in a little coat (I still remember the warm puffs of air coming from my mouth) as I waved a flag while climbing a spiral ramp encircling the stadium.
My father was with me. The memory is vivid—painfully so today, because it’s so clear. I was never athletic; I was the classic chubby kid who got put in goal for street soccer games. But San Siro was San Siro. Just like the Arena, where I ran a race (by then I was in middle school) around the park with hundreds of kids my age. I finished among the last, but not dead last (at least there’s that!). They gave me a medal and a drink to lift my spirits.
If I wanted, I could turn every sports venue in Milan into a story. Throughout the last century, the city scattered sports facilities across its landscape, as if to give its residents the chance to practice sports at any level.
Or even just enjoy watching. This created a unique topography, filled with places that have attracted hundreds, thousands of people for decades. To exercise, to admire others doing so, or even to attend shows, concerts, rallies, speeches. We all know a city isn’t just houses, dwellings, private spaces. It is, if anything (and especially!), the space of social connection.
And what has brought together citizens, generations, and social classes more than sports?
The architect in me may differentiate between quality and quantity, but the writer in me loves retracing those places, old or new, beautiful or not, existing or lost, without bias. Each of our personal histories blends with these spaces; urban memory, in the end, is just that: making a place a shared space, one that’s recognized by all.
I said I was never athletic.
But the huge Sports Palace - the first one built in the city, which we now know as the Palazzo delle Scintille - had always fascinated me, ever since my father took me to see the Trade Fair there.
That time of year when Milanese people marveled at the industriousness of their city, filling their pockets with brochures celebrating each technological innovation (a constant, noted by many writers, from Gadda onward). During the fair, Vietti Violi’s pavilion was used as an automobile exhibit. This wasn’t a clash; the space lent itself, and still lends itself, to different uses.
Let’s not forget that the presence of the Trade Fair allowed Milan’s teams to compete in the Fairs Cup, the precursor to the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League).
Once the fair ended, the stadium returned to hosting various events: cycling, boxing, basketball (and during the pandemic, Italy’s largest vaccination hub).
On that route, between Scintille and San Siro, are probably Milan’s most important sports facilities...
The Vigorelli Velodrome, where despite its cycling purpose, people remember it mostly for the Beatles’ only Milan concert (it’s now used for American football)
The Palalido (now Allianz Cloud) dedicated to basketball, the Hippodrome, dominated by the “Leonardo’s Horse” statue (which isn’t by Leonardo, but that’s a longer story), and the Palasharp (a venue that’s changed names more often than functions over the decades - I still think of it as PalaTrussardi).
Vedute aeree del Duomo di Milano Vedute aeree del Duomo di Milano (1960 - 1969) by PublifotoFondazione Fiera Milano
But as Baudelaire said, cities change faster than the heart of a mortal!
Despite the collapse caused by the memorable snowfall of 1985 (or maybe because of it), my heart can’t let go of the memory of the San Siro sports arena, with its curving, saddle-like shape. I saw a Pino Daniele concert there. The acoustics were terrible, but the concert was unforgettable.
And let’s not forget that Milan is a city of water: of canals, irrigation ditches, and swimming pools. From the public, now unused ones like the Lido of Milan, where my mother, father, and I spent summer Sundays, to the Scarioni, Argelati, and Romano (which we students from the Polytechnic all called “the Ponzio”). Then there are the indoor pools, dotted around the city’s various neighborhoods: Solari, Carella Cantù, De Marchi, Mincio, the brand-new Bocconi pool, and many more.
Among these, the Cozzi stands out, a jewel of 1930s sports architecture, and for me, especially, the pool where I took my daughters when they were little, and watched, moved, as they splashed like tiny fish, back and forth, back and forth.
Because, as I insist, a city isn’t just a silent sum of architectures, functions, utilities. It’s a shared space where memory, both public and private, turns to stone, turns into history. I don’t remember the exact match my father took me to see as a child.
Striscione pubblicitario della Fiera Campionaria di Milano del 1951 in piazza Duomo a Milano (post 1951/04/12 - ante 1951/04/29) by Ancillotti & MartinottiFondazione Fiera Milano
And perhaps I don’t want to remember it intentionally
Football was our topic of conversation, and since he left, I’ve stopped talking about it, keeping those trivial yet affectionate conversations locked away in my memory. But without nostalgia.
Rather, waiting for the next memories of sport that the city will offer me. Waiting, in fact, for the 2026 Olympics.
