Stadium that hosted Hitler's Olympics gets £158m facelift

The Berlin stadium which hosted the 1936 Olympic Games, presided over by Adolf Hitler, is to reopen on Saturday after a multi-million euro facelift designed to dispel its Nazi image and prepare the site for the 2006 World Cup.

The Berlin stadium which hosted the 1936 Olympic Games, presided over by Adolf Hitler, is to reopen on Saturday after a multi-million euro facelift designed to dispel its Nazi image and prepare the site for the 2006 World Cup.

The 74,000-seat marble and granite complex was where the Nazi leader famously snubbed the black American athlete Jesse Owens who had won four gold medals.

After the Second World War, the complex that was once conceived as a sporting temple to Aryan supremacy fell into decay while serving first as the headquarters of the British military government of Cold War west Berlin and then as a venue for football matches and concerts.

It has remained a potent symbol of the Third Reich and has been something of an embarrassment to successive Berlin governments. But, this Saturday, the stadium will officially reopen with a huge party attended by more than 70,000 guests. The conductor Daniel Barenboim will host a classical concert and the German singer Nena will also perform.

The party celebrates the completion of a four-year renovation project costing €240m (£158m). A roof has been installed as well as comfortable seating and floodlights capable of producing "daylight" illumination over the pitch.

The revamp has been carried for the World Cup finals, which Germany will host - for the first time since 1974 - in 2006. The final is scheduled to be played in the stadium.

"We had to abide by strict preservation rules," said Alexander Goerbing of Walter Bau AG, which carried out the rebuilding project. "Our aim was to retain the building's original character, but to give it a lighter feel which offsets the heavy walls of the stadium."

The refit was not without drama: in January 2002, building workers discovered a British Second World War bomb buried beneath the stadium and had to call in explosive experts to defuse it.

The refurbishment will also include an attempt by German historians to thoroughly explain the arena's Nazi past. A new museum at the stadium's entrance and 35 information boards dotted about the complex will provide details of the building's history. "These historical markers are long overdue," said Hans Joachim Teichler, a history professor at Potsdam University who supervised the renovation project.

"There has been talk of Nazi ghosts and a Nazi atmosphere because the stadium is one of the few Third Reich buildings left. But the new arena is completely different."

The museum explains how the Nazis turned the 1936 Olympics into a propaganda show that was designed to convince the world that Adolf Hitler's new Germany was both a positive and popular development. It features excerpts from the 11-hour Olympic propaganda film Olympia by the Nazi film director Leni Riefenstahl, who died only last year.

Plaques also mark the "Fuehrer box" where Hitler and other German leaders took the Nazi salute from thousands of spectators and watched Owens sprint to victory in the 100 and 200-metre track events, run a leg for the winning 400-metre relay team and win the long jump, beating German athletes and making a mockery of Nazi "master race" ideology.