Tivoli, Germany (1928–2011)

Alemannia Aachen

Vinicius Soler
Lost Grounds
3 min readOct 21, 2021

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Photo by Wikipedia

Tivoli was the home stadium of German club Alemannia Aachen between 1928 and 2011, making it the longest-lived stadium in the club’s history.

The history of the Tivoli begins a few years before its construction, in 1908, when the city of Aachen granted the Villa Tivoli to Alemannia Aachen. Villa Tivoli was an old residential villa built in 1806 by the German architect Jacob Couven. Inspired by the Roman emperor Hadrian’s former holiday village, Villa Adriana in Tivoli, Jacob Couven honored the Italian city in the village’s name. Alemannia Aachen expanded the sports area of ​​the residence and prepared a football field, which it used to host its matches from that same year on. In 1925, the city provided the club with an even larger part of the land, and Alemannia Aachen understood that it was an opportunity to build a bigger and better structured stadium, which would help the club to place itself in a relevant position in the national context in a period of post-first world war reconstruction. The work on the new stadium, which would bear the name of the old Villa Tivoli, began in 1925 and lasted until 1928. On June 3, 1928, the Tivoli had its opening match with a 4x3 victory by Alemannia Aachen against the Preussen Krefeld, in front of an audience of 10,000 people.

The new stadium was constantly used by Alemannia Aachen and brought stability to the club over the decades. But after World War II, a period in which Alemannia Aachen became famous for being one of the only clubs to challenge the Nazi regime at the time when they fought for the release of Jewish members arrested by the government, German football reorganized and it was requested that the Tivoli, which until then had a maximum capacity of 11,000 people, was expanded to participate in national leagues. Alemannia Aachen then decided to temporarily move to the Aachen Waldstadion, the city’s other stadium, and start an expansion of Tivoli. In 1957, the works were completed, and the Tivoli was reopened, assuming the architectural format that remained until the end.

In the following decades, Tivoli was the scene of great moments in the history of Alemannia Aachen, who played in the Bundesliga four times, including being runner-up in the 1968–69 season and with two Regionalliga West titles, which at the time was equivalent to the second national division, in the 1964 and 1966–67 seasons.

In 2005, Alemannia Aachen understood that Tivoli was already obsolete by the standards of football at the time, and decided it was time to build a new stadium. In 2008 work began on the New Tivoli, on the same land where the Villa Tivoli used to be, very close to the old stadium. In 2009, Alemannia Aachen played their farewell match at Tivoli, in a 3x2 loss against Werder Bremen. Tivoli remained for another 2 years hosting the matches of Alemannia Aachen II until at the end of 2011 it was demolished, putting an end to the almost 80-year history.

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