Ljudski vrt

Ljudski vrt has spent most of its life shrinking rather than growing. It opened in 1952 with room enough for 20,000 people to stand along open terraces, and for decades that was the point — a big, plain bowl in Maribor built for crowds rather than comfort. The ground's biggest test came on 8 July 1973, when a European tie drew 20,000 through the gates, a mark the stadium has never come close to matching since the standing areas disappeared.

What followed was a slow trade of capacity for seats. Conversion to an all-seater in 1998 cut the number to just over 10,000, a second phase of work in 2006 pushed it back up to around 12,400, and a rebuild of the west stand in 2020–21 brought the ground to its current 11,709, with 651 of those seats set aside as VIP places. Each reconstruction narrowed the crowd the old terraces used to hold while widening the range of what the stadium could offer the people who still came.

The natural grass pitch has stayed constant through all of it, the one part of Ljudski vrt that has not been rebuilt, resized or reseated since Milan Černigoj and Boris Pipan first designed the ground.