Gazprom Arena

At the western tip of Krestovsky Island, on the site of the demolished Kirov Stadium, stands a modern football arena known today as "Gazprom Arena." It is the home stadium of St Petersburg's Zenit and one of the venues that hosted the largest international football tournaments held in Russia over the past decade.

The winner of the international design competition for the stadium in 2006 was the project titled "Spaceship" by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. Construction dragged on for more than a decade and went through three general contractors — the companies Avant, Transstroy, and Metrostroy — and four general designers. During this time the project was radically revised five times: capacity grew by roughly a third, and the area of the structure increased by almost two-thirds compared with the original concept. The budget was also re-approved five times and, according to official figures, ultimately rose from 6.7 to 43.8 billion roubles.

The bowl of stands is covered by a retractable dome 286 metres in diameter, resting on eight masts; the height of the structure from the ground to the roof is 75 metres, and, including the supporting pylons, 110 metres. The central part of the roof, measuring 224 by 92 metres, opens in 15 minutes, revealing a gap of 190 by 90 metres. Because St Petersburg's climate is unfavourable for grass, the pitch was made retractable: it weighs around seven thousand tonnes and rolls out beyond the bowl on special wheeled tractors in about four hours. Building the arena required 486,000 cubic metres of concrete and 32,000 tonnes of steel, and the total mass of the stadium exceeded 1.2 million tonnes.

The stadium's name remained a matter of dispute for several years: options considered included "Zenit Arena," "Krestovsky," "Petersburg Arena," and others, while during international tournaments the neutral name "Saint Petersburg" was used. The stadium received its official name, "Gazprom Arena," only on 8 December 2018, when Zenit football club transferred the naming rights to its sponsor. The arena's capacity also varied depending on the event: from 56,196 seats for Russian championship matches to 64,468 for matches of the 2018 World Cup.

The first official match at the stadium took place on 22 April 2017 between Zenit and Ural. The arena subsequently hosted matches of the 2017 Confederations Cup, including a sold-out final, group-stage and play-off games and the semi-final of the 2018 FIFA World Cup between Belgium and France, as well as matches of the 2020 European Championship. In December 2018 the same venue hosted an ice hockey match for the Channel One Cup, drawing a record crowd of 81,000 for Russian and European hockey.

Today Gazprom Arena remains one of the country's largest and most technically sophisticated stadiums — with a retractable roof, a rolling pitch, and a construction history stretched out over years of disputes about its name, budget, and contractors, but which ultimately resulted in a venue that has hosted the major football tournaments of our time.