Olympiastadion Berlin

Designed by architect Werner March for the 1936 Summer Olympics — the Games infamously used by the Nazi regime as a propaganda showcase, and the setting where African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals in a direct, public repudiation of Hitler's racial ideology in front of the dictator himself — the Olympiastadion remains one of the most historically loaded sporting venues in the world, and one still very much in active use rather than preserved purely as a museum piece.

The stadium's scale and monumental stone construction are unmistakably of their political moment: a deliberately imposing, classically referenced design meant to project state power, quite different in character from the steel-and-glass stadiums built for later Olympics elsewhere. A major renovation completed in 2004 modernised the facility — adding a partial roof and updating seating to current safety standards — while carefully preserving the historic exterior and stonework, bringing capacity to 74,475 and making it Germany's largest football stadium.