Salle des Sports Henri Ferrari
Frontignan, France
The space holds about seven hundred people. The ProLigue is a level above National 1, and the jump is felt more in the quiet of the corridors than in the roar of the crowd. The hall also turns to other sports, taekwondo and aikibudo among them, but the handball season is the one that sets the rhythm for the year.
The building got a facelift in 2017, when the city decided to stretch its budget and its ambitions together. A new reception was added in October 2024, but the core of the arena remains what it has always been: a practical box for sport. The memory that lingers is not the year the roof was replaced, but the night the Coupe de France brought Paris Saint-Germain to town. The Karabatic brothers were on the pitch, and the town turned out in numbers that surprised the hosts. The fans set up a zone outside the doors and the hall did not put the game to bed early. That evening sits in the club’s history more firmly than any figure in a record book.
The name on the door belongs to Henri Ferrari, a local weightlifter who won medals before the city had a proper sports centre. His plaque is on his old house down the road, but the arena keeps his memory alive in the way people still talk about him when they are waiting for the doors to open.