Central Dynamo Stadium

Stand still for a moment and listen. Traffic hums along Leningradsky Prospekt, one of Moscow's great northern avenues. Behind it, under the trees of Petrovsky Park, there is a quieter sound: footsteps on stone, a dog walker's call, and on match days a low roar that rolls out over the rooftops. In front of you rises a long, pale colonnade. It looks old. It is old. But what stands behind it is very new.

This is the Central Dynamo Stadium, one of the oldest sporting grounds in Moscow. Today the complex carries the name of Lev Yashin, the most celebrated goalkeeper in Russian football history. Many visitors know it by its commercial name, the VTB Arena. Under all of these names, it has been the home of the Dynamo Moscow football club for nearly a century.

The story begins in the 1920s. The young Soviet state wanted to show the world a new kind of citizen: healthy, disciplined and athletic. Sport became a public project. The stadium opened in 1928, in time to host the first All-Union Spartakiad. This was a large Soviet multi-sport festival, planned as an answer to the Olympic Games of the West. Thousands of athletes marched across the new field.

Here is the first detail many visitors miss. Dynamo was not an ordinary club. It was founded in 1923 under the patronage of the Soviet security services and the interior ministry. Its members included policemen, border guards and officers. That connection shaped the club's identity for decades. Fans of rival teams, especially Spartak and CSKA, often mocked Dynamo as the team of the authorities. Dynamo supporters answered with pride in their long tradition.

The original stadium was a product of its time. Its architects worked in the constructivist spirit of the late 1920s — clean lines, simple geometry and practical forms. Concrete stands surrounded the pitch, and a long eastern grandstand faced the city. For many years it was the largest stadium in the country. Then, in the 1950s, the much bigger Central Lenin Stadium at Luzhniki took that title, but Dynamo kept its own loyal crowd.

Now the second surprise. In 1945, only months after the end of the Second World War, Dynamo Moscow travelled to Britain. They played some of the strongest clubs there, including Chelsea and Arsenal. The matches drew enormous crowds. British spectators had expected little from the Soviet team, but Dynamo did not lose a single game on that tour. The visitors returned home as heroes, and the tour is still remembered with pride by older fans.

No story about this place is complete without Lev Yashin. He played his entire senior career for Dynamo, from the early 1950s until 1970. He usually wore black, and he moved with long reaching arms, so the press gave him a nickname: the Black Spider. In 1963 he won the Ballon d'Or, the award for the best footballer in Europe. He is still the only goalkeeper ever to receive it. Look around the grounds for his statue, frozen in a diving save.

The stadium also had an Olympic moment. In 1980 Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games, and Dynamo hosted Olympic football matches. For many Muscovites, those summer weeks felt like a rare open window to the world. Foreign visitors filled the streets near the metro, and the old stands were full. It was one of the last great occasions in the life of the original stadium.

By the early two thousands, the old arena was tired. The concrete was cracking and the facilities belonged to another century. The stadium closed in 2008. Most of it was demolished, but the builders kept the historic eastern facade. That is the colonnade in front of you now. Behind it, a completely new structure took shape over the following decade. The modern arena opened at the end of the 2010s.

The design is unusual, and this is worth a moment of attention. The complex contains two venues under one roof. On one side is the football stadium. On the other is a large indoor arena for basketball, hockey and concerts. The two halls sit back to back inside one giant shell. From outside, it looks like a single building. Inside, two different crowds can cheer at the same time, separated by one shared wall.

Look at the contrast between old and new. The pale classical columns stand in front, calm and orderly. Above and behind them rises the modern shell, smooth and dark, with sharp angles. Some Muscovites love this meeting of eras. Others find it strange. Either way, the old facade keeps the memory of the 1920s stadium alive. It gives the street a familiar face, even though the building behind it has changed completely.

The neighbourhood carries its own history. The metro station Dinamo, named after the club, opened in the late 1930s and still serves the stadium crowds. Across the road stands the Petrovsky Palace, a red-brick building from the eighteenth century, built as a resting place for monarchs travelling to Moscow. Nearby lies the old Khodynka Field, once a military training ground. Today the whole district mixes parks, apartment blocks and new towers.

Before you walk on, take one last look at the colonnade. Notice how the light falls between the columns and lays long shadows on the pavement. Listen again for the traffic, the birds in Petrovsky Park, perhaps the distant noise of a crowd inside. Generations of fans have walked this same path, from wooden turnstiles to digital tickets. As you leave, you are walking where they walked, past the old stone face of a very new stadium.