Estádio da Luz

The Estádio da Luz, officially named the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica and commonly mistranslated as Stadium of Light, is a football ground in Lisbon, Portugal, the home of SL Benfica. It is also called A Catedral (“The Cathedral”) by Benfica’s supporters.

	Capacity		65,647
	Opened		25 October 2003

Luz is actually the area of Lisbon in which the Estádio da Luz stands and the word ‘luz’ happens to also mean ‘light’. As the people of Lisbon often referred to the original stadium, demolished beginning in 2002, as simply the light, the common English name for the stadium became the stadium of light. The Stadium of Light in Sunderland, England may well have been inspired by this Lisbon example, though it has other well established reasons for bearing the name.

It hosted several matches in the 2004 European Football Championship, including the final. The previous Benfica stadium (also called “Estádio da Luz” and one of the largest stadiums in the world with 120,000 seats) was demolished and the new one was built for the tournament with an official capacity of 65,647. The architect, Damon Lavelle, designed the stadium to use as much natural light as possible. It is classified by UEFA as a 5 star stadium, allowing it to host major European cup finals. The original Estádio da Luz, opened in 1954, hosted the 1992 European Cup Winners’ Cup final before a crowd of well under 120,000, its absolute capacity in those years. Before that final it also hosted the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship final held in Portugal with an impressive attendance of 130,000. The original stadium replaced Estadio do Campo Grande.

The old Estadio Da Luz saw performances from the likes of Eusébio and Rui Costa . It hosted championship after championship during the glory days of the 50′s and 60′s.

In the year 2000 Portugal was selected as the host of the 2004 European Championships. After many false starts Benfica presented a proposal for re-building their stadium in order to enable it to become the main venue for that championship.

In October 2003, the stadium opened to a sell out crowd as Benfica took on Nacional Montevideo of Uruguay in an exhibition match. Benfica had finally moved into the 21st century and into a home befitting the clubs history and prestige.

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

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Sport Lisboa e Benfica official website
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