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Wembley Stadium (often called "Wembley") is a football stadium in Wembley, London. The largest roof-covered football stadium in the world
The previous Wembley Stadium (officially the Empire Stadium, but called Wembley due to its location) was arguably the world's most famous football stadium, being England's national stadium for football. In 2002, the original structure was demolished and construction began on the new stadium, originally intended to open in 2006. This was later delayed until early 2007. The final completion date of the stadium came on 9 March 2007, when the keys to the stadium were handed over to The Football Association. The first match staged at the new stadium will be an Under-21 international between England and Italy
Wembley was designed by the world-renowned architectural firm HOK Sport and Foster and Partners. It is the most expensive stadium ever built at a cost of £798 million and has the largest roof-covered seating capacity in the world.
The design of the stadium is an all-seated 90,000 capacity bowl stadium protected from the elements by a sliding roof. The stadium's signature feature is a circular section lattice arch of 7 metre internal diameter with a 315 metre span, erected some 22° off true, and rising to 133 metres tall. It stands 133 metres above the pitch and supports all the weight of the north roof and 60% of the weight of the retractable roof on the southern side.
The stadium is linked to Wembley Park Station on the London Underground via Wembley Way, and Wembley Central via the White Horse Bridge. It also has a rail link - provided by the Wembley Stadium railway station - to London Marylebone and Birmingham, but whether this becomes operational is down to the discretion of the station |
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| Location |
London, England |
| Broke ground |
2002 |
| Opened |
2007 |
| Owner |
The Football Association |
| Operator |
Wembley National Stadium Limited |
| Construction |
GBP£798 Million (2007) |
| Architect |
Foster and Partners |
| Tenants |
England national football team |
| Capacity |
90,000 (Football) |
| 75,000 (Concerts) |
| 60,000 (Athletics) |
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operator (Chiltern Railways).A "platform system" has also been designed to convert the stadium for athletics use, but its use decreases the stadium's capacity to approximately 60,000. Instead of the 39 steps needed to be climbed to enter the Royal Box and collect a trophy, there are now 107.
Structure
 With 90,000 seats, the new Wembley is the largest stadium in the world with every seat under cover.
The stadium contains 2,618 toilets, more than any other building in the world.
The stadium has a circumference of 1 km.
At its peak, there were more than 3,500 construction workers on site.
4,000 separate piles form the foundations of the new stadium, the deepest of which is 35 metres.
There are 35 miles of heavy-duty power cables in the stadium.
90,000 m³ of concrete and 23,000 tonnes of steel were used in the construction of the new stadium.
The total length of the escalators is 400 metres.
Each of the two giant screens in the new stadium are the size of 600 domestic television sets.
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