La Liga giants Real Madrid head to Braga for the first time to play in one of the world’s most unique stadiums: Braga Municipal Stadium. The 30,000-capacity stadium comes carved into a mountainside, incorporating natural landscape into its design. Renowned architect Eduardo Souto de Moura built the stadium in 2004 for the UEFA Euros hosted in Portugal. <\/p>\n
The Portuguese designer later won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2011, recognizing the $236 million Braga stadium as one of his best contemporary works.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The absence of the traditional four-sided stadium structure means that the rocky face of the mountain serves as a natural backdrop to the field.<\/p>\n
Including a giant screen across the mountain’s face is another ingenious touch by Souto de Moura. There are plans to double the stadium’s capacity, nicknamed The Quarry, to make it eligible to host the knockout stages of the 2030 World Cup.<\/a> Portugal, along with Morocco and Spain, is one of the host countries. Preliminary games occur in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay to mark the 100th anniversary of the World Cup. <\/p>\n “The Braga stadium might be the most difficult project I ever did,” said De Moura, who uses natural materials to integrate his works into the surrounding environment. “And perhaps for that reason, the one I enjoyed the most, they had found a plot of land for a stadium, in a valley with a waterway, [and] thought the stands could follow the curves of the valley. I visited and fell in love with it.”<\/p>\n
![\"\ud83d\udccd\"](\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/14.0.0\/72x72\/1f4cd.png\")
Braga Municipal Stadium![\"\ud83c\udf1f\"](\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/14.0.0\/72x72\/1f31f.png\")