Currently, Siena lie second in Serie B, eight points ahead of third placed Novara. The club are also only one point away from the summit, and it seems that promotion to Serie A is easily within the club’s grasp, barring any late season catastrophe. The club are somewhat fittingly preparing to build a new stadium featuring an odd characteristic: it’s partially underground.
The creative design is modeled after the ancient Greek Theater, and even won the 2011 Architectural Review Future Projects award. The stadium will fit about twenty-thousand people: definitely not one of the biggest in the world, but that should be plenty for a side like Siena to ensure that seats are always packed.
The design group, Marazzi Architetti, said that key features include the openness of the ground and the great view of the surrounding area:
Our proposal was to preserve the environmental integrity of the area and with great attention the project appears like a kind of natural incident caused by an idrogeological phenomenon or by an earthquake. Like the ancient Greek Theater, the stadium for 20.000 spectators is set within the Fossatone slopes, and takes shape as it curves through its bends, opening out to create a spacious area for concerts and outdoor events, excavated to form an inclined plane, offering a view of Siena in the background.
Mock-Up of the Interior of the Stadium
One side of it will be fully roofed in- the side most fully underground (This can be seen in the above picture). There will be shops and restaurants in this area of the stadium as well, should all go according to plan.
One potential hurdle is that the club doesn’t seem to have quite enough funding for the proposed idea, and are looking into private funding to help alleviate some of the costs. Promotion should help financially as well, in what would for sure be another interesting attraction for calcio.
Construction hasn’t started yet, but the plan is to build it in Isola d’Arbia.
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