A century of emotion at the intersection of sports and culture. San Siro is the cathedral of Italian soccer, but it has also hosted concerts and historic events, becoming part of the soul and identity of a city and a country. It has witnessed nights of dribbles and goals, trophies lifted and melancholy silences, classic matches and derbies, but also candle flames and, later, the glow of smartphone screens around a stage. Crowds have gone wild for Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen, Vasco Rossi and Michael Jackson, Genesis and the Rolling Stones, U2 and Coldplay. It has welcomed Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis; hosted gatherings of Jehovah’s Witnesses; staged the opening ceremonies of the 1990 World Cup and the 2026 Winter Olympics; and played host to elite rugby, major boxing matches and American football. In a couple of years, tennis will join the list.

“What’s so strange? We’ve all been there,” Roberto Vecchioni sings in a song about a stadium and an old love. And it’s true: each of us carries a memory, a dream experienced from the stands or through a television screen, each with our own “Lights at San Siro,” shining since Sept. 19, 1926.

The first stone was laid on Aug. 1 of the previous year, a testament to the determination of Piero Pirelli, the young president of AC Milan who wanted a home for his club. The stadium’s inauguration came with a city derby packed with goals: Inter won 6-3, while Giuseppe Santagostino, known as Pinogia, scored the first-ever goal for the Rossoneri. His Royal Highness the Duke of Bergamo was in the stands. The crowd was large but “not commensurate with the vastness of the venue,” while 120 Carabinieri officers provided security.

So began the story of a stadium described the following day as an “immense realm of reinforced concrete,” one destined to shape Milan’s urban landscape and visual identity for a century. The city bought it in 1935 and approved an expansion. Work was completed in 1939, and the ribbon-cutting was entrusted to Italy’s reigning world champions, who faced England. That was the first tier; the monument was taking shape. In the 1950s, an elevated upper deck created the second tier. The third was built on the eve of Italia ’90, completing the stadium’s definitive transformation.

Inside, meanwhile, the destinies of the city’s two clubs unfolded in parallel and became intertwined. Inter has also played at San Siro since 1947. The name comes from the neighborhood, on Milan’s northwestern outskirts, once part of the municipality of Trenno. When Pirelli bought the land, the racetrack was already there. The stadium was renamed for Giuseppe Meazza in 1980, a year after the death of the great player, an Inter icon who played for the club when it was known as Ambrosiana and also had a spell at Milan, then known as Milano — Italianized names imposed by the Fascist regime.

Meazza was on the field in Italy’s blue jersey for the first major international matches held at the stadium: a 1934 World Cup qualifier against Greece and the semifinal against Austria. But the national team had already appeared there for a friendly match, first taking the field in 1927 against Czechoslovakia. Italy’s history at San Siro spans 49 matches, bringing countless joys and bitter disappointments. It was also here that Sweden knocked Italy out of the World Cup.

The stories of Milan and Inter are long and evocative: more than 4,000 matches, a gallery of faces and personalities, protagonists and supporting players, devoted executives and club legends. The Moratti family and Silvio Berlusconi, Sandro Mazzola and Gianni Rivera, Helenio Herrera’s Inter and Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, Franco and Beppe Baresi, brothers who played on opposite sides.

It is the cathedral of soccer, but San Siro has always opened its doors to other sports as well. Duilio Loi defended his world junior welterweight title — won at San Siro — against Puerto Rican Carlos Ortiz before 61,000 spectators. An equally enormous crowd celebrated Sandro Mazzinghi’s victory in the super-welterweight championship against South Korea’s Kim Ki-soo. These were the legendary 1960s, when boxing was hugely popular and a pair of gloves could fire the imagination just as much as a bicycle or a soccer ball.

And then came the concerts. Magnificent ones.

The first, on June 27, 1980, was Bob Marley’s. One hundred thousand fans set attendance records for both the stadium and the Jamaican singer. It was one of his final performances: less than a year later, melanoma would take his life. The first Italian artist to fill San Siro was Edoardo Bennato. Over the years, a parade of major artists would transform the cathedral of soccer into a temple of live music.

Now, at sunset, the stadium of dreams is approaching its final days. It will be demolished, leaving only part of its legacy behind, while Milan and Inter build a new home next door. But more emotions will unfold in the meantime. More hearts will beat inside it, helping create unique atmospheres, and nothing will be lost to memory.

Because history is made of small stories, of generations overlapping, of passionate fans who seem to exist outside of time. There were boys who cheered Mario Corso’s free kicks and José Altafini’s thunderbolts who are now gray-haired men, taking their grandchildren to the stadium in Lautaro or Maignan jerseys. Many of the youngsters who danced to Springsteen’s rock in 1985 returned to see the Boss 40 years later, carrying the same enthusiasm — and a few more wrinkles.

“What’s so strange? We’ve all been there...” Each carrying private emotions that have become part of a collective memory.

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