STADIA: STADIO RENZO BARBERA, PALERMO

Palermo’s Stadio Renzo Barbera is located in La Favorita, a district to the north of the city centre overlooked by Monte Pellegrino (the most beautiful promontory German writer Johann Goethe reckoned he ever saw). Not far from here begins Viale della Libertà, a road that runs south-southeast, joins Via Ruggero Settimo, which in turn continues into Via Maqueda, before terminating finally at Piazza Giulio Cesare about 4km later. Viale della Libertà is unremarkable, although you might like to live along it. There are banks, low-rise tenements, an English Garden, and, where the street widens on the approach to Piazza Castelnuovo, smart looking restaurants, boutiques selling high-end designer gear, and a hammam. To the east is the city's port, which was bombed heavily during the Second World War and could explain the more open and modern feel in and around Palermo’s ‘New City’.

Via Ruggero Settimo carries on where Viale della Libertà left off. The road here is narrower, livelier and the shopping more affordable, and in the evening it is closed to traffic. About 400 metres farther it turns into Via Maqueda – alongside Piazza Guiseppe Verdi where you will find Teatro Massimo, the largest opera house in Italy and the fourth largest in Europe. This boulevard hasn’t been formally pedestrianised but it may as well be as its ends have been closed off to traffic with substantial blocks of concrete. Via Maqueda cuts across the old town, riddled with irregularly shaped side streets, Sicilian Baroque architecture (San Giuseppe dei Teatini), Byzantine (Martorana), Arab-Norman (San Cataldo), Gothic (San Francesco d'Assisi), and even Modernist (Banco di Sicilia). It’s not for everyone. These backstreets and alleys are shabby and littered, especially in and around Albergheria and Kalsa, but the piazzas and main thoroughfares are generally tidy. Giardino Garibaldi is very neat, the grounds of Palermo Cathedral immaculate.

1952

Stadio Renzo Barbera’s immediate vicinity is mostly residential, and a certain type of residential, populated by high-rise apartments. This is the fate of continental stadia that aren’t built in or around out-of-town industrial estates, which is no bad thing. The apartment blocks themselves may not hold much in the way of architectural interest, but at least people live here. Moreover, the pot plants that populate the spalled balconies suggest that they like doing so – that the tenants take pride in their surroundings.

When Stadio Renzo Barbera opened in January 1932 – called then Stadio La Favorita – the area very likely wasn’t residential, but maybe not industrial either. Photographs from around the period suggest a sort of pastoral urbanism. The ground itself consisted of two main stands, an athletics tracks, and curved banks behind each goal-end making do as terraces. Palermitani engineer Battista Santangelo was responsible and he covered the west-sided tribuna with an impressive concrete, cantilevered roof – a nod to the modernist style of his antecedent Ernesto Basile, the architect responsible for Teatro Massimo. By the season’s end Palermo had been promoted as champions to Serie A, only to be relegated four years later.

In 1948 Palermo topped Serie B for a second time and immediately set about developing La Favorita, possibly with a view to establishing a surer footing in Serie A. By 1952 the athletics track was gone and the end terraces had been built up to join the existing stands, enclosing the ground completely and providing capacity for 41,595 spectators. In 1954 Palermo were relegated once more.

Le Aquile (The Eagles) vacillated between the top two divisions for the next three decades, whereupon they found themselves demoted to Serie C. That same year – 1984 – the stadium was enlarged significantly with the addition of a second tier, supported on a steel framework reaching around from one end of the tribuna to the other, increasing the overall capacity to 44,860. In 1986, just as the club declared itself bankrupt, floodlights were installed.

If it wasn’t for the 1990 World Cup then that might have been that. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that political expediency demanded Sicily play a part in the tournament, that might have been that. And it nearly was. In 1989, less than a year before the Word Cup was due to commence, two of the tribuna’s new roof supports collapsed, resulting in five fatalities. Another seven beams fell the following day, and had the site not been closed down by the local magistrate then the death toll could easily have been higher. The World Cup organising committee was reluctant to deprive Sicily of its chance to host world cup football but it looked like they might. FIFA, appreciating the gravity of the situation, and perhaps aware of how scarce rain is in Palermo over the summer, made an exception and gave permission for games to be played at La Favorita whether there was a roof in place or not. In the event, there was a roof.

The reason why a new roof was being assembled in the first instance was because the tribuna was to be demolished and built anew – only the protruding, middle section of the original façade would remain (deemed a “valid example of colonial architecture”). The new structure would house two tiers, effectively doubling its size, which in itself would not be enough to satisfy the minimum all-seated capacity required to accommodate world cup football. Consequently, the second ring of terracing that had been added in 1984 was extended upwards, contiguous with the upper tier of the new tribuna. These extensions were to be supported by Y-shaped steel beams running around the circumference of stadium, while the present framework supporting the lower portion of the second tier was to be partitioned off from view. Other improvements would include a new ‘Cell-System’ pitch, an electronic scoreboard, improved hospitality and press facilities, and a general tidying up of the surrounding precinct. The refurbished stadium was inaugurated on the 30th May 1990, nine days before the World Cup was due to commence.

In 2002, Stadio La Favorita was renamed Stadio Renzo Barbera in honour of the club’s former chairman, who died that same year. (During his tenure as president Palermo reached two Coppa Italia finals, losing narrowly to Bologna on penalties in 1974 and to Juventus in 1979 after extra time.) The ground as it stands today is worthy of his name.

The tribuna’s roof is supported by four concrete towers that double up as stairwells, providing access to the amenities within. They resemble the sort of thing you might see on the side of a multi-storey car park or shopping mall: a 1980s take on modernism not quite resisting the pull of post-modernism. In between the two middle towers is the smooth concrete façade of the original entrance hall. Either side of them, tinted glass. The upper tier leans backward, its concrete underside left exposed. A teal coloured, metal-clad rim runs around the top of it. The rear of the roof juts backward slightly and then slants diagonally forward – or rather the teal cladding does, obscuring the cantilevered beams that support the roof beneath. The stadium’s name is appended in yellow lettering, contrasting nicely against the teal facing.

Inside, the stadium is awash with green seats. The back walls are painted pink, the colour of Palermo’s shirts. Monte Pellegrino’s presence is in no way diminished, and the viewing angles are about as good as they can get. Stadio Renzo Barbera may be the least architecturally curious of the grounds used at the 1990 World Cup but it may be one of the most practical, and it has weathered well, perhaps due to the climate.

As is generally the case these days, there’s talk of building a new stadium elsewhere, down-scaling the existing one for municipal use. Since Unione Sportiva Città di Palermo’s liquidation – for the second time – and their reformation as Società Sportiva Dilettantistica Palermo, such schemes must surely be on hold. In the meantime, Stadio Renzo Barbera is more than capable of doing the job.