Villa Park

Villa Park stands in Aston, a district of Birmingham. It is the home of Aston Villa Football Club, which moved there in 1897. The stadium occupies part of the former Aston Lower Grounds, once a Victorian amusement park beside Aston Hall, a Jacobean mansion. Before football, the site held an ornamental pond called the Dovehouse Pool and a cycling track where 15,000 spectators once watched races. The ground also hosted athletics meetings and boxing bouts alongside early football fixtures. Today it remains one of England’s largest football grounds. Villa Park has hosted seventeen England internationals since 1899 and fifty-five FA Cup semi-finals, more than any other stadium. In 1999 it staged the last UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup final, and in 2012 it hosted the FA Community Shield when Wembley was in use for the Olympic football tournament. The stadium has four main stands: the Holte End, Trinity Road Stand, North Stand and Doug Ellis Stand. A major redevelopment of the North Stand will soon raise the capacity beyond fifty thousand. Visitors walk past the grand Trinity Road Stand, built in the 1920s with stained glass, mosaics and a sweeping staircase. The Holte End remains one of the largest single-tier stands in the country. Beyond the pitch, the Witton and Aston railway stations lie less than a mile away, making the ground easy to reach. The surrounding area retains traces of its Victorian past, including the old aquarium building absorbed into the stadium. From the terraces, the view stretches across the pitch framed by the four distinctive stands.