Strahov Stadium: "Enduring but not endearing"

I'm not sure that words or photos will do justice to explain just how huge the all-but-abandoned Strahov Stadium in Prague is, so I'll settle for numbers. One is 240,000 -- the number of people who officially can cram into the seats. The other is 9 -- as in, when Wikipedia lists the dimensions of the playing surface, it simply says, "9 football pitches." So it is not just, as you say, a shtadium, but a masshive shtadium.

We couldn't get in, but you can see a panorama video here.

It is also pretty much a ushlesh -- sorry, useless -- stadium. AC Sparta Prague trains there, and several musical acts (most notably the Rolling Stones and most recently George Michael in 2007) have performed there, but aside from that, Strahov Stadium is a relic often bypassed by tourists and left in a state of disrepair.

Outside support

On second thought, the graffiti is an improvement.

Originally built for gymnastics displays, debate continues on the stadium's future. This article, published in The Prague Post in 2003, details some of the options considered and rejected from the past -- including "a leisure mecca for the 21st century," whatever that entails -- and mentions other potential uses that have not come to fruition, such as, naturally, another stadium. (The article also is where I stole the title for this blog post.) In 2010, the city rejected a proposal to demolish it.

So it remains for now, in all of its gaudy, crumbling, Communist grandeur. On the bright side, at least the district has a beautiful monastery.

UPDATE: A couple of co-workers, including the Special Assistant to the Blogger, have checked in with footage from Back In The Day. Here's a photo, stolen from somewhere, from one of the Spartakiad ceremonies held every five years that, in the words of a co-worker, "showed everyone how happy, healthy and young people were here." The 1960 ceremony had 750,000 gymnasts perform.

And here's video from the 1980 event in all its rah-rah Communist splendor:


And finally, if you like your propaganda performances done to a soundtrack straight out of "Dynasty," here's a clip from "Chlapci a chlapi" (boys and men), a TV series about men during their mandatory military service: