Stadiumi Selman Stërmasi

The stadium's history is longer than its current name suggests: it opened in 1956 as Stadiumi Dinamo, home ground for the police-affiliated club, before later taking the name of Selman Stërmasi. That founding date puts it among the older venues in the Albanian capital.

The pitch sits on Ruga Muhamet Gjollesha, in the heart of Tirana, close enough to the city centre that the ground has always read as an urban stadium rather than an out-of-town arena. It has stayed compact by design, and the natural grass pitch has been maintained through decades of use without a change of surface.

What sets it apart now is not what stands there but what is planned to replace it: OMA, the Rotterdam-based architecture practice, has drawn up a reconstruction project for the site, putting the current structure on borrowed time. For a ground that has carried the Dinamo name through most of its existence, the redevelopment marks the first real break with the building put up in 1956.