Red Bull Arena

Red Bull Arena – a stadium inside a stadium

From the outside the Red Bull Arena does not look like a modern stadium. It looks like an overgrown earth bank. Only after crossing one of the four bridges does the new build appear inside it. No other ground in Germany is put together this way — and it says more about Leipzig than about the club that plays there.

The bank is made from the rubble of the city

From the mid-1950s the Zentralstadion stood on this site — with room for roughly 100,000 people, the largest ground in Germany. It was not a concrete structure but an embankment, raised in large part from the rubble of a city destroyed in the war.

When the new ground was built in 2004, that bank was not removed. The modern arena was placed inside it and the old ring was left standing, so the walk to your seat runs literally through Leipzig's post-war history. Capacity today is 47,069; the last modernisation came in 2021.

World Cup 2006: the Maxi Rodríguez volley

Leipzig hosted matches at the 2006 World Cup, and the best-known of them was the round-of-16 tie between Argentina and Mexico. It went to extra time, and Maxi Rodríguez settled it with a volley from around twenty-five metres — still among the most replayed goals of the tournament. Earlier in the group stage, Spain beat Ukraine 4–0 here.

Getting there through the Elster floodplain

The ground lies west of the city centre at the Sportforum, surrounded by the Elster floodplain. From Leipzig's main station — the largest railway terminus in Europe by floor area — it is about a twenty-minute walk through the Rosental park, or a short tram ride.

The route fills up early on matchdays. Walking is the pleasanter option; if you take the tram, take an earlier one than you planned.

Around the match

Leipzig is where the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 began — the Monday demonstrations set out from the Nikolaikirche in the centre. Two hundred and fifty years earlier Johann Sebastian Bach was cantor here, and the Thomanerchor still sings in the church where he is buried.

Both are in the city centre, a quarter of an hour from the stadium — enough to fill the morning before a match.