Arena Independência

Belo Horizonte carries the memory of 1950 twice over — once in the Mineirão, once here, in Horto, at the ground that opened that same year under the World Cup and never let the association go. Arena Independência stands as the older witness, the one that took its shape before the bigger house down the road was even built, and it wore the name Raimundo Sampaio long before anyone called it an arena.

The ground passed hands more than once — first raised under a commission with Sete de Setembro behind it, then folded into América Futebol Clube after a 1997 merger left the club holding a stadium built for someone else's ambitions. The name Raimundo Sampaio stuck to the official paperwork in honour of the club's old president, a man they called Mundico, and it has outlasted every rebrand since.

When Mineirão went into reconstruction between 2010 and 2012, Atlético Mineiro came here to play its home games, and the ground found itself carrying two clubs at once rather than one. Its own reconstruction, finished just as that spell ended, tore the old stadium down to the changing rooms and rebuilt it steep — a 45-degree rake that impressed the fire inspectors enough to demand barriers, and the barriers blocked the view for six thousand seats in the upper tier.

Music has filled it as often as football: Skank and Jota Quest through the Pop Rock Brasil years, Ivete Sangalo's debut at Axé Brasil, David Guetta and Calvin Harris on the same stage decades later. The record crowd, though, belongs to neither game nor concert — a 1963 state final between Minas Gerais and Guanabara that packed in well over thirty thousand people, more than the current capacity allows.