The most significant of Braga’s many hills is the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and place of pilgrimage for Christians, who climb the white and gold zigzag stairs to its doors.
Six kilometers to the west, planted as if on a Lego brick on Monte do Castro, stands another monument that is both incongruous and completely natural, suggesting that the divine played a role here too.
But SC Braga’s municipal stadium was designed, engineered and built by human hands – and on Tuesday it will host one of the world’s greatest club teams, Real Madrid.
Braga will be the 152nd different club Real have played against in 68 years of continental football, but the 14-time European champions will have never played in a stadium with such a backdrop.
At the end of the winding roads that lead to the highest point in the Dume area, right next to an old quarry, lies a stadium that seems to defy logic.
A stand whose foundations are built into a rock; a giant scoreboard perched on a granite embankment behind a goal; and nothing but empty space in a row, offering a panoramic view of the city below.
Braga’s incredible stadium overlooking the valley (Octavio Passos – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Known as “A Pedreira” (The Quarry), the stadium could have been unremarkable if it had not been for architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, whose creation won the 2011 Pritzker Prize, considered the Nobel Prize in architecture.
“Being an architect is not an easy life, and gaining international recognition for a small country like Portugal… I won’t pretend that I suffer from false modesty,” Souto de Moura tells The Athletic.
“The Braga Stadium is perhaps the most difficult project I have ever done. And maybe that’s why I enjoyed it the most.”
Souto de Moura was not the architect who originally took the reins on the project in 2000. The vice-president of the Braga city council had already turned to Norman Foster, the brains behind the Gherkin building in London and the glass dome of the Reichstag in Berlin, but he was too expensive.
They called and asked if he could put them in touch with Santiago Calatrava, the architect who designed New York’s World Trade Center Oculus. He told the council they would likely encounter a similar problem.
Sensing an opportunity, he agreed to a meeting the next day to discuss the order, at which it was decided that the capacity should be 30,000.
“They had found a site for a stadium in a valley with a waterway. They thought the stands could follow the curves of the valley. I visited it and fell in love with it,” says Souto de Moura.
“I still have the photos I took back then. Above the land was this old quarry. I began to imagine the stadium below, surrounded by rock. I told the council I wanted to build a 15,000-seat stand carved into the rock there and then do the same on the other side.
(Eduardo Souto de Moura)
“There would only be two stands and people would have a good view of the game. When designing the stadium, I realized that every stadium is now a television studio.
“That’s why I designed the lighting to be almost vertical above the pitch (shining down from the ends of both stands) and as close as possible. I’m not a football expert, but it’s a kind of theater with actors on both sides.”
Turning his sketches into reality required innovation, careful experimentation and years of safety testing – all while staying within budget and over a three-year construction period.
Two original sketches by Eduardo Souto de Moura (Eduardo Souto de Moura)
The main goal was to integrate the stadium into the surrounding area, so beams, poles and cables could not be part of the aesthetic like in most football stadiums.
The west stand is carved into a granite massif to create the impression of a Greek amphitheater. 1,700,000 cubic meters of hard rock and gravel were excavated before the 18 one-meter-thick supports could be held in place with anchors.
Site of excavation (Eduardo Souto de Moura)
When developing his vision for a roof over the field, he was inspired by Inca bridges and the roof of Washington Dulles Airport. He drew most heavily on the experience he had gained working with Alvaro Siza Vieira on the construction of the Portugal Pavilion at the 1998 World’s Fair Expo.
“It was a large open space under a concrete cover. This made me realize that it was possible to cover a structure without glass or anything else,” says Souto de Moura.
“But UEFA said there had to be natural light and that the stadium had to be ventilated, so the cover couldn’t be completely closed. I tried making small adjustments to allow light to come in from above through holes in the cover, but the sun would come in and create circles of light on the field.
“I gave up on that idea and thought about leaving a rectangular opening, sized exactly to the proportions of the playing field.”
A colleague traveled to UEFA headquarters in Switzerland and received approval for his plan to cover each stand with two concrete slabs connected and supported by a network of 25-meter-long steel cables stretching across the pitch. Each one is connected to beams that are attached to the rock of the quarry.
(Octavio Passos – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
It was a mammoth task to achieve the right balance of forces without the roof resting on pillars – it is a cantilever supported only by the west stand and its cables are anchored in the rock. Two large beams at the top of both stands provide additional support, but it required computer simulations and small model tests in a wind tunnel before construction was safe.
The stadium was successfully completed in time for the 2004 European Championship, a home tournament in which Portugal lost to Greece in the final.
Yet Braga still regularly fills only half of the arena, which is owned by the city council, and Ricardo Rio, mayor of Braga and president of the city council, confirmed earlier this month that the stadium is for sale.
The Estadio 1 de Maio was Braga’s long-term home from 1921 to 2003. They paid just €500 (£435; $533) a month to rent their current stadium and, with improvements needed to modernize the facilities, the city council is cutting ties.
“The dialogue is open, so we will officially make an assessment on the value at which the stadium could be sold. It only makes sense that Braga’s stadium is used,” Rio said.
View from the stands (Octavio Passos – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
“I do not intend to demand the 200 million euros invested in this facility, but of course an amount that will allow the city council to obtain reimbursement and, for example, make other projects profitable, including the renovation of the Estadio 1 de . “Maio, which is suffering a very rapid decline after these years of neglect.”
In recent years there has been talk that Braga could build a new stadium on the old site, a thought that saddens Souto de Moura even more than the alteration of his unique creation.
“Portugal is one of the hosts of the 2030 World Cup and to qualify for the knockout games you need a stadium with 60,000 seats,” he says. “Braga only has 30,000. When it was founded, Braga usually finished in the bottom half of the table and was often threatened with relegation; Now they are at the top so people are demanding more from the club.
“If it were the other way around and the stadium was too big, people would complain too. It’s an occupational hazard.”
Until 2013, Braga had won just one major trophy – the 1966 Portuguese League Cup. Since then, they have cemented their profile as Portugal’s fourth-best team, won four domestic cups and established themselves in Europe, reaching the Europa League final in 2011 and becoming the qualified for the Champions League group stage for the third time this season.
In line with its growing ambitions, Braga is nearing completion of its ‘Sports City’ project, begun in 2017, with a new women’s arena that complements the sprawling academy building and playing fields above the city stadium.
It was a home for Braga as they emerged as one of the big boys of Portuguese football – and is now 22 percent owned by Paris Saint-Germain owners Qatar Sports Investments.
It’s not as big as the Bernabeu, but in a world of glass and stainless steel, this concrete cliffside amphitheater is as much a work of art as a football stadium.
(Top photo: Diogo Cardoso/Getty Images)