Forgotten Stadiums: What Remains When the Crowds Are Gone

When Italian photographer Emanuele Mattia D’Angelo first stumbled upon an abandoned ground only a short drive from his home, he could hardly believe it had gone unnoticed for so long. “It was just twenty minutes away,” he recalls. “I had no idea it even existed. The moment I stepped inside, I realised it was a one-of-a-kind place – forgotten for years, yet unique, with still some things left there for training.”

That discovery set him on a journey that would become Forgotten Stadiums, an ongoing project dedicated to exploring, as he says so poetically, “What remains once the crowds are gone, and the echoes of history are but whispers in the wind. ” Places where empty terraces, rusting turnstiles and overgrown pitches have become his subjects. For Emanuele Mattia D’Angelo, these spaces are not simply relics of a sport’s past but mirrors of the societies that built them, used them, and then left them behind.

“The inspiration behind this is to mix many of my passions,” he explains. “Forgotten Stadiums isn’t just for people who love sports or football. I want to tell unique stories by blending architecture, history, culture, politics, and public money waste.”

His photographs are striking not only for their stillness but for the questions they ask of us. Stadiums are rarely considered disposable. They are built as landmarks, often as symbols of ambition and civic pride. Yet in every country, there are examples where ambition has faltered, money has dried up, or the teams that once called these places home have disappeared. What remains are monuments to past investment, stubbornly standing even as they decay.

“The images I share are sacred to me,” Emanuele Mattia D’Angelo says. “I hope that through them, the places I capture can have a new life, ready to be rediscovered. I want us to realise how many spaces in our society we leave abandoned – and it’s not just stadiums. These are spaces that truly served the community but have been left forgotten due to local administrations.”

His work combines the intimacy of local discovery with a wider curiosity. While he has been drawn back to grounds close to home, his eye is firmly fixed abroad. “A dream has always been South America,” he says, acknowledging the pull of football’s most fervent continent. “But I just came back from Serbia and saw some incredible fields. Right now, my next goal is Cagliari, and after that, I have several more to explore in Sicily.”

Emanuele Mattia D’Angelo’s project sits within a broader conversation about public space, memory and neglect. The stadiums he documents show how quickly collective attention can move on, leaving large and once-lively venues to weather in silence. They also hint at missed opportunities: pitches that could host local teams, terraces that might become gathering spaces, grounds that could have been reimagined rather than left to collapse.

Emanuele Mattia D’Angelo’s work is personal. Each frame is less a record of ruin than an attempt to prompt reflection. “These places carry traces of life,” he explains. “You feel it when you walk in – the energy is still there, even if the crowds are gone.”

His lens captures more than concrete and grass. It captures the fragility of collective memory and the ease with which communities can lose what once mattered to them. In documenting forgotten stadiums, Emanuele Mattia D’Angelo isn’t only preserving their existence, he’s asking us to reconsider what we abandon and why.