Vicente Calderón Site: The Stadium Over the Motorway
Why is it significant?
Look across the space beside the river, on the eastern bank, where new park and new buildings are taking the place of something that dominated this skyline for half a century: the Vicente Calderón, the home of Atlético de Madrid.
Key Facts
| Place | Vicente Calderón Site: The Stadium Over the Motorway |
|---|---|
| Address | Paseo de la Virgen del Puerto 67, 28005 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.40170, -3.72030 |
| Part of Walk | Madrid Río: Royal Bridges, a Buried Motorway and the Slaughterhouse Turned Arts Factory |
| Generated | Generated |
Look across the space beside the river, on the eastern bank, where new park and new buildings are taking the place of something that dominated this skyline for half a century: the Vicente Calderón, the home of Atlético de Madrid.
The stadium opened in 1966 under the name Estadio del Manzanares, and in 1971 it was renamed after the club president who had built it, Vicente Calderón. Its most famous feature was something no architect would plan today. When the M-30 ring road was built along the river, it was run straight underneath the main stand, so that drivers passed beneath the feet of tens of thousands of fans... very few stadiums anywhere could say that.
For Atlético supporters this was more than concrete. Here they celebrated the league and cup double of 1996, endured two seasons in the second division at the start of the 2000s, and saw the team rise again to win the league in 2014, always with the same stubborn loyalty. They are nicknamed the colchoneros, the mattress makers, because the club's red and white stripes once looked like the striped fabric of old Spanish mattresses.
In 2017 the club moved to a new stadium on the eastern edge of the city, and the last matches were played here that spring. Demolition followed in 2019 and 2020, and many fans came to take a last photograph, or simply to stand at the gates while the stands came down. The plan for the site was the same idea as the rest of Madrid Río: cover the motorway and give the riverbank back to people.
Old fans will tell you that on a good night the noise of the Calderón carried right across the water to Carabanchel. Now there is mostly birdsong and the clatter of building work. Walk on downstream to the baroque bridge with the two little stone pavilions in the middle.