1989 tour intro

Meaning of The Eras Tour Introduction (It’s Been a Long Time Coming) lyrics by Taylor Swift

"The Eras Tour Introduction (It’s Been a Long Time Coming)" by Taylor Swift is a song that reflects on the journey and evolution of Taylor Swift's music career. The repetition of the phrase "It's been a long time coming" highlights the passage of time and the anticipation leading up to this moment. Each line references different eras of Taylor Swift's discography, representing different albums and significant periods in her life.

The lyrics mention several of Taylor Swift's albums such as "Fearless," "Big reputation," "Speak now," "Folklore," "1989," "Evermore," and "Red." These references serve as markers of her musical growth and artistic transformation over the years. Each album represents a different chapter in Taylor Swift's life, with its own unique themes, sounds, and emotions. Through this song, Taylor Swift is acknowledging her past work and the impact it has had on her journey as an artist.

The inclusion of lyrics like "Loving him was red" and "Meet me at midnight" hints at specific songs that hold sentimental value for Taylor Swift's fans. By incorporating these snippets, she recognizes the connection she has with her audience through her music.

Overall, "The Eras Tour Introduction (It’s Been a Long Time Coming)" celebrates Taylor Swift's evolution as an artist and provides a nostalgic reflection on her past albums, while also building excitement for her upcoming tour.

This meaning interpretation was written by AI. Help improve it with your feedback

More from this artist

1989 [Liner Notes]

Taylor Swift

1989 (Taylor’s Version) [Prologue]

1989 Tour Setlist

1989 World Tour Outfits

Trending this week

La La Lost You

88rising & NIKI

End of Beginning

Heaven Knows (The Angel Has Flown)

Orange & Lemons

Taylor Swift’s Epic ‘1989’ Tour: Every Night With Us Is Like a Dream

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Welcome to New York! Ish! Taylor Swift brought it all back home last night, or at least to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, for her 1989 Tour. Never one to do things halfway, Swift has made this a pop show — or rather the pop show, as far as 2015 is concerned. The whole night was a two-hour pop-blitz spectacle, where the songs retain all the teardrops-on-my-guitar intimacy of her early days, except blown up into massive electro-warrior emotional avalanches pushing the can’t-even-ometer into the red. This show had it all: life lessons (“You are not the opinion of someone who doesn’t know you!”), synth-disco raves, acoustic ballads, explosions, video interviews with her cats, sparkle-intensive costume changes, a Weeknd duet and oh yeah, the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team parading through the crowd to “Style” in front of 60,000 screaming fans. That kind of night.

When Bruce Springsteen plays NYC, he likes to joke about how the city’s beloved hometown icons — Sinatra, the Statue of Liberty, the sports teams — are rooted in Jersey. There was an element of that when Swift kicked off with her new theme song “Welcome to New York,” explaining, “Although we’re in New Jersey, our story opens in New York.” But these songs aren’t really about any particular city any more than they’re about any particular boy — they all take place in the galaxy Taylor creates in her songs, one where everything orbits around one girl’s mood swings, where boys are disposable and cats are keepers, where girlfriends matter and lying about your feelings is not how things are done around here. (A handwritten sign taped to a door backstage: “Cats Roaming. Do Not Open.” Only on Planet Tay.) It was the kind of show that could only make emotional sense in a stadium this size.

As always, the hardcore fans were a crucial part of the spectacle, in full gear with their costumes and glowsticks. The crowd was, as Taylor said, “jumping and dancing and loud and lit up and dressed up.” There was a gang of girls with their birthdates bedazzled on their shirts a la the 1989 logo—2004, 2007, etc—while their moms proudly repped 1976. Two girls with matching lightboards, one saying WE’RE TOO BUSY DANCING and the other TO GET KNOCKED OFF OUR FEET. A couple of girls with homemade Mean Girls -style shirts announcing, “You Can’t Swift With Us.” The fan faves were probably the girls carrying giant Starbucks venti cups as big as they were, with the logo tweaked to STARBUCKS LOVERS and Taylor’s face in the middle. That’s how a Swift show works: You love the players and you love the game.

Editor’s picks

Every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history.

“We all have different insecurities, different fears, different scars,” Taylor announced. “There are many different types of people here tonight. But we have one thing in common: When we feel great amounts of joy or great amounts of pain, we turn to music, and that’s why we’re here tonight.” The show was a marathon—19 songs, stretching almost to midnight. The new songs, despite their studio sheen, really kick live—especially synth-pop epiphanies like “New Romantics” (where Taylor’s male harem of private dancers toted her around on a park bench) and “Blank Space.” She rocked a glow-in-the-dark polka-dot ensemble for “How You Get The Girl,” as her dancing boys twirled neon umbrellas and her band staged an extremely welcome twin-guitar duel. She picked up her trusty acoustic guitar for “Can’t Feel My Face” with the Weeknd, whose hair might have been the most truly 1989 thing in sight.

She radically revised the oldies, which did not stop anyone from singing them. “I Knew You Were Trouble” began with a slow creepy goth-industrial intro — loads of the Sisters of Mercy’s Andrew Eldritch in her vocals! Floodland , holla! — before the drums kicked in and turned it into a rock-me-Amadeus stomp. “Love Story” became a synth ballad, as she whisked around the stadium on her magic levitating catwalk. Even better was the hair-metal version of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which has never-ever-ever sounded this nasty–Taylor in leather at the lip of the stage, doing a perfect version of the Slash guitar slouch, shoulders hunched, hair falling over face. Who knows, maybe Tay will do an full-on Headbanger’s Ball album next time.

The Reinvention of Taylor Swift

The taylor swift guide to 1989: breakers gonna break, fakers gonna fake, taylor swift: the music that made me.

And because she’s Taylor, she talked the talk. You have never heard a pop star say “Let me clarify that statement” more times in one night. It got heavy, like when she confessed, “Real talk, Jersey: I haven’t always felt like I have real friends, or any friends at all.” She gave the crowd her list of friendship requirements (“You have to like me” and “you have to want to spend time with me,” with various codicils and subclauses). She also told us, “If I had my way, everything would be simple for all of you. I wish nobody would ever mess with your mind. I wish nobody would wait two days to text you back, when you know they had their phone with them the whole time!” That line got one of the biggest roars of the night.

But the hugest moment had to be “Style,” when she brought out the U.S. soccer team, just a few hours after their ticker-tape victory parade. They looked like they were having a blast, strutting down the catwalk, waving giant flags. (After the show they gave her a SWIFT #13 team jersey.) She also brought out Project Runway host Heidi Klum, who if memory serves is from one of the countries the U.S. team aufed in the tournament. (Let the healing begin!) Tay’s been preaching the girl-bonding gospel so long, it’s easy to take that part of her game for granted — but that’s just a measure of how much she’s changed the pop-star landscape. For “Bad Blood,” she struck a pose with video comrades Hailee Steinfeld, Lily Aldridge, Gigi Hadid and Lena Dunham — she shows off her girlfriend collection the way rock bands like Guns N Roses or Great White used to make videos where the girlfriends lounge around the soundstage.

(And speaking of Taylor girlfriends, a sincere question: have Haim always been this good? I wasn’t a fan going in but their opening set was fire, roughing up their pop hits and doing a fantastic version of “Oh Well,” by the Peter Green edition of Fleetwood Mac, which sounds sounds so snotty as a sullen-teen-girl anthem — “Don’t ask me what I think of you / I might not give the answer that you waaant me toooo.” Somewhere, Peter Green must be proud these black magic women have given this song a new life.)

As usual for a Swift show, the quiet moments were some of the most intense, especially “Clean,” “This Love” and the piano medley of “Enchanted” and “Wildest Dreams,” where she whipped out the piano-hair windmills. One of the highlights was “You Are In Love”—not just a deep cut, but a bonus track—where she led the whole crowd in a sing-along. Funny how all the state-of-the-art special effects can’t hold a glowstick to the visceral power of 60,000 fans singing about love pains.

It all ended with “Shake It Off,” with fireworks, confetti and dancing boys in purple Angus Young schoolboy outfits. All night, the Eighties concept took many different forms — from the pre-show mix tape (Human League, Toto, Fine Young Cannibals and my girl Tiffany) to the beats. But mostly, it’s in the way she embodies the Eighties ideal of a pop star — Madonna, Prince, Bruce — as an auteur who makes every album, every tour something new. Honestly, if Taylor Swift had just done the Red tour all over again, plugging in the new songs with some greatest hits, that would have been fine with absolutely everyone. Taking the easy way would have been 100 percent good enough. It just wasn’t what she wanted to do. Instead, she wanted to push a little harder and make a gloriously epic pop mess like this. What a night.

Bebe Rexha Slams G-Eazy After 'Me, Myself and I' Goes Viral: 'Ungrateful Loser'

R.e.m.’s original members reunite to perform live for first time since 2007, shakira went through hell. now she's living her best life, tyla knows she's black, guys. she doesn't know why people say otherwise.

1. “Welcome to New York” 2. “New Romantics” 3. “Blank Space” 4. “I Knew You Were Trouble” 5. “I Wish You Would” 6. “How You Get the Girl” 7. “I Know Places” 8. “All You Had to Do Was Stay” 9. “Can’t Feel My Face” with The Weeknd 10. “You Are in Love” 11. “Clean” 12. “Love Story” 13. “Style” 14. “This Love” 15. “Bad Blood” 16. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” 17. “Enchanted”/“Wildest Dreams” 18. “Out of the Woods” 19. “Shake It Off”

Hear Paul Weller's Haunting Cover of Billie Eilish's ‘What Was I Made For?’

• Paying Tribute
• By Emily Zemler

Khalid Reveals 'Melancholic Experience' on Intimate Single 'Adore U'

• Feeling This

Watch Maya Hawke Perform 'Hang in There' on 'The Daily Show'

• Late-Night TV
• By Charisma Madarang and Sarah Grant

Tony Bennett's Daughters File Lawsuit Against Brother Over Legendary Singer's Estate

• 'Equitable relief'
• By Charisma Madarang

Most Popular

Rob schneider booted mid-set from another stage after attendees walk out, nickelodeon star kel mitchell says dan schneider brought him into a closet and yelled 'all this wild stuff' on 'all that' set: we 'kind of bump heads', insiders claim prince harry is reportedly ‘pulling strings with his own contacts’ for meghan markle’s potential next era, columbus teen drops diss track about grandma for reporting him missing after being found safe, you might also like, how to watch ‘practical magic’ online, yoox net-a-porter’s china joint venture with alibaba to end, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, 2024 promises to be a feast for animation lovers, house panel advances gop bill to ban college athletes as employees.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Taylor Swift announces ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ at Eras Tour show in Los Angeles

Taylor Swift performs during “The Eras Tour,” Monday, Aug. 7, 2023, at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Taylor Swift performs at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. Friday, July 28, 2023. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

A stage technician walks past a video screen featuring images of Taylor Swift before her performance, Monday, Aug. 7, 2023, at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

• Copy Link copied

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Taylor Swift closed the 2023 U.S. leg of her landmark Eras Tour Wednesday night in Los Angeles in a big way, announcing the fourth edition of her re-recording project: “1989 (Taylor’s Version).”

After playing a few tracks from her “1989” era live, including an abridged take on “Bad Blood,” the pop superstar approached the center of the stage with an acoustic guitar in hand and suggested to the audience that she had been working on something big.

“Instead of just, like, telling you about it, I think I’ll just sort of show you,” she told the crowd as the screen illuminated behind her. “‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ available Oct. 27!” she cheered, pointing out that she was revealing this on the eighth month of the year and the ninth day — a numerical clue.

Then she launched into a surprise performance of the ascendant “1989” track “New Romantics” and the “Reputation”-era piano ballad “New Year’s Day” for the first time during her world tour.

Just last month, Swift released her re-recording of “Speak Now” and soon claimed the record for the woman with the most No. 1 albums in history. The “Taylor’s Version” projects were sparked by music manager Scooter Braun’s purchase and subsequent sale of her early catalog.

Beyond the breaking news, across more than three-and-a-half hours at SoFi Stadium, Swift offered fans a bevy of career-spanning tracks — less a greatest hits collection, and more a live celebration of an artist in her veterancy.

Choreographed easter eggs were frequent. Swift would mimic dance moves from her iconic music videos and crack jokes about her feelings and “women-splaining to men how to apologize to women.”

Openers — and “besties,” as Swift described them — HAIM joined her on stage for the “evermore” cut “no body, no crime.”

Across more than 40 tracks reflecting 17 years of recorded music, it was as if the ground shook with the rapturous sound of 70,000 fans scream-singing along to her hits and deep cuts alike. This was Taylor Swift’s house — filled with fans in light Taylor Swift cosplay (pink dresses for her 2019 album “Lover,” black leather and snakeskin prints for 2017’s “Reputation,” sequins and A-line skirts for 2014’s “1989,” and so on).

Before launching into her “1989” era tracks, Swift performed an emotive single from her “folkore” album, “cardigan.” “When you are young, they assume you know nothing,” she sang, contorting the line in the third verse, “I knew everything when I was young.”

For a performance predicated on returning to the past as well as celebrating the present, it felt like a mission statement. Throughout her career and her many sonic experiments, Swift has been a keen observer of human condition and heartbreak. Even in those early songs about fantasies and fairytales, she demonstrates a kind of pragmatic wisdom. It is why a song she wrote when she was 16 can elicit the same sort of response as one written in her 30s.

And in a summer stacked with superstar tours celebrating giant new releases — like the larger-than-life experiences of Beyoncé's “Renaissance” World Tour and Drake’s 56-date “It Was All a Blur” tour — Taylor Swift’s lookback Eras Tour stands proudly among them.

For fans who desire their beloved artist play the hits — she certainly delivered.

Celebrity Style

Taylor Swift Just Wore Mismatched Shoes At The Eras Tour

But Carrie Bradshaw did it first.

Like many of us, Taylor Swift may be a Sex and the City fan, too. The singer gave her Eras Tour a total makeover after resuming it on May 9, in part to incorporate songs from her latest album The Tortured Poets Department . However, rather than just add in a new era , Swift decided to refresh her entire tour wardrobe, possibly taking cues from Sarah Jessica Parker’s SATC character.

For the 1989 act of the Eras Tour, Swift typically wears a matching monochrome set with a beaded fringe bra top and mini-skirt in one of many colors. But for her first Paris show, she decided to mix things up a bit, and her shoes seem like they’re right out of Carrie Bradshaw’s fashion playbook.

Taylor’s New 1989 Look

As the intro to her 2014 hit “Style” played, Swift entered the stage in a pink crop top with a halter neck and a mermaid-blue high-waisted skirt. Roberto Cavalli custom-designed both ombré pieces, just like her previous 1989 looks.

She paired the ensemble with mismatched custom Christian Louboutin high-heeled ankle boots — in the same magenta and blue shades as her outfit.

The Carrie Bradshaw Inspiration

SJP would likely be very proud of Swift’s imaginative footwear choice. In the Season 3 episode “Escape From New York,” Carrie Bradshaw stepped out in mismatched Louboutin strappy heels, one in a light blue and the other in a metallic pink, much like Swift’s new 1989 shoes.

As Parker explained years later, Carrie’s shoes were totally intentional , saying that she and SATC costume designer Patricia Field chose to wear one of each pair they received. “Perhaps because both were so delicious in color and seemed in harmony with the dress but also because we simply loved doing 1 of each,” she wrote in an Instagram comment.

In the decades since that episode aired, Parker has kept up the tradition of wearing mismatched shoes . In October, she donned a $450 pair of heels from her own SJP footwear line that included one black and one champagne-colored heel. And not only were they sold that way (this pair is currently sold out), but she proudly sells other mismatched pairs , too.

Given their shared love of writing, it makes sense for Swift to identify with Bradshaw. But now they have some fashion inspiration in common as well.

• 2024 Tony Awards Nominations
• How to Watch the 77th Annual Tony Awards
• Ariana DeBose on Hosting the Tony Awards
• Angelina Jolie, Cynthia Erivo, Idina Menzel and More to Present at 2024 Tony Awards
• All the Latest Tony Awards News

Taylor Swift Announces End of Eras Tour: Inside the Record-Breaking Concert

Taylor swift's eras tour: all the changes since dropping 'the tortured poets department', zac efron shares why he thinks his brother dylan might win 'the traitors' season 3 (exclusive), paris hilton on her 'iconic' return to reality tv with nicole richie (exclusive), 'practical magic' sequel: nicole kidman explains why it was time to reunite with sandra bullock, serena williams says she's just figuring out who she is after 27-year tennis career (exclusive), watch travis kelce meet young cancer survivor and sister sporting 'go taylor's boyfriend' shirt, watch chris brown get stuck in the air mid-concert, kyle schmid and caity lotz share their meet cute story as they gear up for baby no. 1 (exclusive), 'brats': andrew mccarthy addresses molly ringwald and judd nelson sitting out doc (exclusive), 'perfect match': tour the season 2 villa with the cast (exclusive), 'shōgun's anna sawai on leaving j-pop behind & lady mariko's ending (exclusive), andy cohen celebrates 15 years of 'wwhl' and reveals 'secret sauce' to show's success, 'bridgerton's nicola coughlan reveals this on-set mishap while filming steamy love scene, tony awards 2024: host ariana debose on how the show is going to 'elevate broadway' (exclusive), watch north west hang up on mom kim kardashian for misusing slang word, 'the braxtons' make their reality tv return family reveals show was traci's 'last wish', andrew mccarthy breaks down 'brats' doc's biggest moments (exclusive), 'wcth's erin krakow shares mamie laverock update after near-deadly accident (exclusive), rob kardashian called 'disgusting' by khloé during 'the kardashians' cameo, khloé kardashian says sister kendall jenner is 'wasting her life', 'the bachelorette' first look jenn tran's on a globetrotting adventure to find love (exclusive), taylor swift will play her final eras tour show in december..

Taylor Swift 's Eras Tour is officially coming to an end. At the singer's June 13 show in Liverpool, she announced that her record-breaking tour will end in December. As of now, her last scheduled tour stop is Dec. 8 in Vancouver, Canada.

In the wake of the news, ET is taking a look back at the epic show and how it changed following the release of Swift's 11th studio album,  The Tortured Poets Department .

After taking a two-month hiatus  from her tour, Swift returned to the stage in May, welcoming fans at La Défense Arena in Paris.

According to social media users who posted from the concert, the first show of the European leg featured a new 45-song setlist that changed the order of certain eras -- including combining the Evermore  and Folklore eras -- and a bevy of changes to the singer's costumes, montages, and more.

Eras Tour Opening Act

While  Sabrina Carpenter  served as the opening act for the first round of international tour dates for  The Eras Tour , the European leg kicked off with  Paramore serving as the opening act. The GRAMMY winners are joining Swift on her European leg for 51 shows. The rock band previously opened the show for two nights in Glendale, Arizona, in 2023.

Their Thursday setlist included "This Is Why," "Hard Times," "That's What You Get," "The Only Exception," "Caught in the Middle" and "Brick by Boring Brick."

Eras Tour Intro Montage

Swift added  TTPD lyrics to the Eras Tour opening montage.

Eras Tour Introduction Monologue

Before she began playing the song "Lover" in the  Lover  set, Swift told her audience that the night would span 18 years of music. Previously, she said that the concert covered 16 years. 

Eras Tour  Lover Set Updates

Swift cut "The Archer" from her Lover  set. The  Lover  house graphic also featured a new addition in the attic for The Tortured Poets Department .

Eras Tour Folklore and Evermore Set Updates

Swift combined the setlists for  Folklore and Evermore 's eras. 

"On the Eras Tour we have now reunited the sisters, combined them into one chapter," she said. "You can call it Folklore , Evermore or you can call it the Sister Albums! You can call it whatever you want as long as you promise to sing 'Champagne Problems' with me."

The new setlist cut four tracks from the formerly individual eras, including "'Tis the Damn Season," "Tolerate It," "The 1," and "The Last Great American Dynasty."

Eras Tour  Speak Now  Set Updates

Swift cut "Long Live" from the  Speak Now  era setlist. She also updated the set with an intro dance featuring Raphael Thomas and eight other dancers before she sang "Enchanted."

Eras Tour  Red  Set Updates 

Instead of performing her  Red  setlist as the fifth era, Swift bumped the  Red  era to third place on the setlist.

Eras Tour Paris Secret Set

Swift kicked off the secret set with "Paris," a bonus song from her Midnights  album. She also performed "loml."

Eras Tour The Tortured Poets Department Set

Swift officially launched the The Tortured Poets Department  era of the tour after the 1989  set towards the end. She performed "But Daddy I Love Him," "So High School," "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me," "Down Bad," "Fortnight," "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived" and "I Can Do It with a Broken Heart."

Swift's 11th studio album was released on April 19 to much fanfare. 

The 31-track collection --  which turned out to be a surprise double album  -- features a hefty helping of  heartbreak songs  following her splits from  Joe Alwyn  and  Matty Healy , as well as a few  sweet love songs  amid her current relationship with  Travis Kelce . 

"She has put her heart and soul into the music, just like with everything she does," a source told ET about the album, "and can't wait for her fans to listen to it and to share it with them."

Swifties predicted the singer would incorporate  TTPD into her tour after  Swift released a collection of new behind-the-scenes videos from what appeared to be tour rehearsals last month. The black-and-white clips are set to her current single, " Fortnight " featuring  Post Malone , as part of her ongoing #ForAFortnightChallenge on YouTube Shorts. 

"A fortnight 'til Paris," she captioned the post. The term "Fortnight" refers to a period of two weeks, a reference to the first of four Eras shows at Paris La Défense Arena on May 9. 

Swifties wasted no time dissecting the images, taking note of what appears to be new props that could indicate the addition of  TTPD  songs to her already extensive setlist. 

ET recently spoke to Travis Kelce , the Kansas City Chiefs superstar dating the pop star, during which he  confirmed he'll be there with bells on  for Swift's upcoming performances. 

"There won't be a bad show, I promise you that," he said. "You know I gotta go support." 

RELATED CONTENT:

Taylor Swift Announces End of Eras Tour at Her 100th Show

Taylor Swift Stops Edinburgh Eras Tour Show to Help Fan in Need

Taylor Swift Reacts to Couple Who Got Engaged at Her Eras Tour Show

• Taylor Swift

Updates on Celebrity News, TV, Fashion and More!

Adolf Hitler, Jesse Owens and Berlin’s Olympiastadion: the complicated history of Euro 2024 final venue

Follow live coverage of Germany vs Scotland at Euro 2024 today

The showpiece final of this summer’s European Championship , likely to attract a worldwide television audience in excess of 300 million people, will be played on July 14 at the Olympiastadion in Berlin — a stadium originally built and funded on the orders of Europe’s most notorious dictator, Adolf Hitler.

Eighty-eight years have passed since the 1936 summer Olympic Games were also staged there, three years after Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, became the country’s chancellor and ruler.

These days, it’s a 74,000-seat stadium with a sleek, modern roof, but the setting stands as a testament to a blood-soaked history.

Over the next month, three group games, starting with Spain against Croatia on Saturday, will be played there, as well as a round of 16 match, a quarter-final and then the final itself. The hundreds of thousands of football supporters who descend on the Olympiastadion will be confronted by many of the features that distinguished this venue as a Nazi shrine almost a century ago.

Advertisement

Since 1945, Germany has grappled with its history in a thoughtful way.

Being Germany, there is a word for it: vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, which translates to mean ‘working from the past.’

Hitler’s bunker in Berlin was filled in with concrete to avoid it becoming a commemoration site, and the Spandau prison, where his deputy Rudolf Hess committed suicide, was destroyed. German children are taught in schools about Nazi atrocities and those training to become police officers are taught the history of the Holocaust and taken to the sites of former concentration camps to understand the gravity. The vast Holocaust memorial is located at the heart of a reunified Berlin.

The Olympiastadion, however, is a listed building, preserved since 1966, albeit its history is vividly detailed by tour guides and via a small museum.

With its oval shape, austere colonnades and soaring terraces, the stadium was designed as a stark statement of German might at a time of rising global tensions in the 1930s. Partially below ground level, it was intentionally constructed to evoke comparisons with the Colosseum in Rome.

To wander around the stadium, as The Athletic did earlier this year, is to witness many of the hallmarks familiar to Olympia, the infamous Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film ordered by the Nazi high command, about those 1936 Olympics.

On a cold, wintery, grey day, the eeriness is all-consuming; swathes of vast space and haunting relics. The colonnades remain intact, so too the Olympic cauldron, located just inside the Marathon Gate, with that cold, ageless, durable design that is in keeping with the architecture of the Third Reich.

The Nazi swastikas have long since been torn down, but nothing quite prepares you for the chilling moment an Olympiastadion tour guide points to a balcony and explains that you are metres away from where Hitler once took pride of place, receiving ‘Heil’ salutes from crowds and athletes alike.

Dotted around the stadium are bronze statues, venerating the perceived power and splendour of the Aryan race. Its own website explains that construction companies were ordered to hire only “complying, non-union workers of German citizenship and Aryan race” to build this edifice of Nazism, meaning Jews in particular were not to be involved.

The Olympiastadion, therefore, will always be a museum in itself but over time, events have shaped a profound and complicated history.

At those 1936 Games, for example, Jesse Owens, an African-American athlete, won four gold medals in front of Hitler, producing arguably the most iconic Olympic performance of all time. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when Germany was divided into West and East, much of the wider Olympic Park was occupied by British forces between 1945 and 1994, using the grounds at times for polo events, and sometimes for parades to honour the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II.

This summer’s European Championship will not be its first major international football tournament, having hosted five matches during the 1974 World Cup, and six, including the final, of the 2006 World Cup, a match which is most famous for French superstar Zinedine Zidane headbutting Italian opponent Marco Materazzi.

In 2015, it hosted the Champions League final, where Lionel Messi ’s Barcelona defeated Juventus , while the stadium has also been the home venue of current 2. Bundesliga (the German second division) side Hertha Berlin since 1965 and staged the German Cup final every year since 1985.

American football’s NFL also played a pre-season game here every year between 1990 and 1994, and Usain Bolt delivered the most extraordinary track-and-field athletics feat since Owens, when, at the World Championship in 2009, he recorded two world records — 9.58 seconds in the 100m and 19.19 in the 200m. Both records endure to this day.

The venue is now a destination for major music stars too; having hosted The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner and Madonna since 1990.

The Olympiastadion will mean many things to many people, sometimes at the same time.

Martin Glass is a director at GMP Berlin, and one of the architects behind the renovations of the stadium, including the roof, at the turn of the 20th century.

In his office, he tells The Athletic : “The stadium is very deeply rooted in the common consciousness and biography of most Berliners. The history started way back in 1912. There was another stadium there before the Olympiastadion, built with the idea of hosting the Olympic Games in 1916, which didn’t take place due to the First World War.

“When the National Socialists took power, they thought that it’s not appropriate to just renovate a stadium from the Emperor’s time, they wanted to represent the so-called Third Reich in what they thought would be an appropriate way. So they decided to do a new stadium and the 1936 Olympics was very much a propaganda event to sell the National Socialist regime with a friendly face to the global public.”

Jules Boykoff teaches political science at Pacific University in the U.S. state of Oregon. He is the author of six books on the Games, most recently publishing What Are The Olympics For? earlier this year ahead of the 2024 edition in Paris, France.

He says: “Stadiums are not just organised piles of brick and mortar — they can express national identity and exude cultural values. In the case of Berlin, they can proffer political agendas.

“When I think about 1936, the stadium was absolutely crucial to the messaging. At first, Hitler wasn’t very keen on the prospect of hosting an Olympics . If you’ve read Mein Kampf — I actually did, cover to cover, and it is not a pleasant experience — he doesn’t really mention sports, outside of boxing. He really wasn’t into the Olympics but he was convinced by his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, that it was a not-to-be-missed opportunity.

“The architecture of the stadium very much fits into that opportunistic mode that Hitler ultimately shifted into. It’s got that neoclassical kind of design, massive amounts of reinforced concrete, a limestone that they used at first on the facade, all those pillars.

“When you look at the photographs of the 1936 Olympics, what’s so striking is the ubiquity of the Nazi swastika. It was flying over the stadium. It was draped all around Berlin, often right next to the Olympic flag — the iconic five rings. So there’s no question that the 1936 Olympics were fully entangled in propaganda for Hitler. They even invented the Olympics torch relay to help spread the word of Aryan supremacy.”

Hitler’s initial scepticism of the Olympics was based upon his aversion to the founding principles of the competition, with the ideals of internationalism and inclusivity countering his world-view. The Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter said that allowing Black athletes to compete “is a disgrace and a degradation of the Olympic idea without parallel”.

At first, Hitler described the Olympic movement as a conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons. Yet Goebbels, aware this would be the first televised Olympics, sensed an opportunity. Albert Speer, a Hitler confidant and an architect, came up with the idea to clad the stadium in limestone, symbolising the permanence of a Thousand Year Reich. The Nazis then cast their preferred Aryan race as the natural heirs to the Ancient Greeks, even beginning the Olympic torch’s journey with Germany in the village of Hellendorf, whose name derived from the Greek name for Greece — Hellas.

By 1936, the Nazi vilification of Germany’s Jewish population was long since underway — most notably via the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws the previous year, which stripped Jews of full citizenship and their political rights — as well as attacks on Jewish businesses, their exclusion from public employment and the denial of access to hospitals.

Yet during the Games that summer, the Nazis engaged in what would now be described as “sportswashing” (the use of sport as a means to deflect from significant human rights abuses) and sought to charm the world with a full-throttled display of Olympic pageantry. In podcast The Rest Is History, historian Dominic Sandbrook tells how the Nazis kept a Jewish fencer, Helene Mayer, on the German team “and used her as evidence that they were much kinder and cuddlier than their foreign critics allowed”.

He added: “They banned the publication of Der Sturmer (during the Olympics) —   the Nazi newspapers were kept off the streets of Berlin. They do all this manicuring of the regime. Banned authors reappear.

“There are some really fascinating books written about the 1936 Games, talking about all the American and British visitors who arrived and were completely taken in. They pitched up and they said Nazis aren’t as bad as they appear and how the nightlife and the nightclubs were great.

“(But) Just outside the city, people are already political prisoners and they are building the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Germany had just remilitarised the Rhineland. So Hitler’s intentions are clear. There’s no doubt about the nature of the regime.”

Arthur J Daley, a sportswriter for The New York Times, had covered discussions about a possible boycott in the lead-up to the 1936 Games, due to antisemitism, but described the Olympics at the end of the calendar year 1936 as “ perfect in setting, brilliant in presentation and unparalleled in performance ”, saying they stood apart in history as “the greatest sports event of all time”. He added: “The mere presence of Herr Hitler was enough to give any Reich athlete inspirational wings to do things he never had even dreamed of doing before.”

The Nazis spared no expense in impressing visitors. The athletes’ Olympic Village had living rooms, restaurants, theatres and separate rooms with television screenings. A Finnish sauna was installed, an artificial lake created, and they even borrowed birds from Berlin Zoo.

Athletes representing Germany won more medals than any other nation in 1936 but the sporting story of those Games, and to this day the most powerful achievement in the stadium, belonged to Owens, who won four gold medals — the 100m and 200m, long jump and, with his American team-mates, the 4 x 100m relay. The common story is that Hitler was so appalled that he declined to shake the hand of Owens, and our tour guide at the stadium quips that “Hitler would rather have chopped his arm off than shake hands with a Black man”.

Yet several historical accounts say that Hitler had stopped shaking hands with all the Games’ champions after the first day, after being asked by the International Olympic Committee to shake hands with everybody, rather than only German winners, or to shake hands with nobody at all. U.S. journalist Daley, present on the day Owens won the 100m, reported that Hitler did not congratulate any of the Black American winners that day but did find time for German hammer throwers.

At certain times, the crowd even chanted Owens’ name. His daughter Beverley told a documentary, The 1936 Nazi Olympic Games , how surprised her father had been to arrive in Germany and discover equal treatment, even if it was performative by the Nazis.

She said: “When they first arrived, they wanted to know where their rooms were, because they thought that they were going to be placed in a different place than the white (members of the American) team. That’s a heck of a thing, when at home it was not like that. And they all ate together. It wasn’t the white boys here, the Black boys there. It was a team, because they were the U.S. Olympic team and that’s what they functioned as.”

Hitler, however, was particularly displeased when Owens defeated Germany’s Luz Long in a dramatic long jump. Beverley Owens added: “Hitler lost face, because he felt that his Olympic team was going to just trounce all over everyone. And that’s why he left the stadium.”

Boykoff says: “It was fascinating to me in researching Owens that everyday Berliners were fascinated by him and wanted to be around him. The Nazis sent a security force to surveil Owens everywhere he went, in order to make sure there was no untoward interaction between Aryan Germans and this African-American man from the United States.

“They were surveilling every German who was getting anywhere close to Owens. The Nazis and those running the Olympics intercepted numerous letters that were intended for not only Jesse Owens, but other athletes too, from people who were trying to raise their awareness about the Nazi atrocities that were already underway against Jewish folks and Roma people and others.”

David Goldblatt, who has written a history of the Olympics entitled The Games, explains the challenges Owens encountered back in the United States, where he had already experienced segregation at Ohio State University, where he was not permitted to live on campus.

Goldblatt recounted on the History Extra Podcast how the events were received in the U.S.: “Owens is celebrated wildly in the Black press in the United States because the press is very segregated in those days. And in the north of the United States, it is considered a great sporting achievement. But there is not a single picture of him in a newspaper published in the South. It’s being completely ignored. It is only really in the post-World War Two era and during that war, when the United States needs to fashion its anti-fascist credentials, that this story takes on such a massive place in the historical record.

“Owens’ athletic achievement is not a myth. And there is no doubt we know from the private papers of Goebbels, for example, that they were deeply rankled by this. They referred to Owens as one of America’s ‘coloured auxiliaries’. If you’ve got a racial hierarchy of the world, it’s going to disturb that profoundly. But in international terms, in either highlighting Jim Crow laws in the United States, or the plight of African-American athletes in U.S. sports culture, or understanding it as a defeat for the racist ideology of the Nazis, that is all manufactured much later down the line.”

Reporting on Owens’ success, Daley, writing in The New York Times, noted: “German nationalism and the prejudice that seems to go with it revealed themselves somewhat disagreeably.”

Boykoff adds: “He (Owens) returns to the United States and he is disappointed by the reception he got from President (Franklin D) Roosevelt at that time. And he says publicly a number of things against Roosevelt. He represented the United States, and he represented them about as well as he possibly could have. And then he comes home and he’s still living in a heavily racist society where he’s seeing discrimination and being discriminated against on a regular basis.”

Today, a street in close proximity to the Olympiastadion is named after Owens, there is the small museum in the Olympic Park and full English-language tours are provided that detail the brutal reality of Germany’s history.

In the aftermath of those 1936 Olympics, the stadium — called “Reichssportfeld” (Reich Sports Field) by the Nazis — acted as a ground for sports training for the paramilitary, and a venue for sports activities for the Hitler Youth. A thick concrete ceiling had been built into the stadium tunnel to provide bunkers ahead of the Second World War, while weapons were also produced, and an administration building served as an ammunition depot. It even became a headquarters for Nazi Germany’s national radio network in the final months of the war.

Curiously, no bombs landed on the stadium during the Allied bombings of Germany. Our tour guide theorises that bomber pilots may have used it as a landmark to find their bearings, knowing that the actual city of Berlin was 15km (just under 10 miles) to the east.

Following the Second World War, this potential shrine to Nazi Germany presented a challenge. Its infrastructure was so vast and useful that it never seemed probable that it would be destroyed on ethical grounds alone. The Russian Red Army briefly formed a garrison there and after the Soviet withdrawal, the British moved in for several decades. The Olympic Park’s swimming pool was opened to the public and the stadium itself, if not the park, returned to the Berlin senate by 1949, who changed the name to Olympiastadion.

The stadium’s website details how the British set about de-Nazifying various elements of it, reducing the height of Hitler’s honorary stand, removing swastikas and narrowing the size of the balcony that had once been his viewing point. In 1966, it was designated as a listed building, meaning its status is preserved.

As time passed, the stadium began to take on new meanings.

Architect Glass says: “It still had this 1936 National Socialist Olympic image. But on the other hand, they built a youth hostel right into the stadium, after the war, so in the 1950s until the 1970s, it was very common for Western Germans to do a class trip, with their history teacher, to Berlin. And that would have been one of the spaces where we spent the night, overlooking the field. Then there were Berlin events like a police show — where the police showed off to the public what they can do on motorbikes. When we did an exhibition in 2000 about the history of the place, we had so many amazing and weird photos of crazy stuff happening.

“Then it became the home to (club team) Hertha Berlin. So it plays a very important role in many people’s personal lives as having gone to their first football match with their parents. For most Berliners, it’s not so much a National Socialist heritage leftover but it’s actually something that was integrated into their personal biography one way or another.

“There was this famous concert by The Rolling Stones at Waldbuhne in 1965, an amphitheatre in the (Olympic) Park, and you can ask any (local) 75-year-old and everybody claims to have been there.”

As Germany’s international rehabilitation gathered pace, most significantly with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany the following year, Berlin made a bid to host international sporting competitions once more, most notably a failed Olympics bid for 2000, which Sydney in Australia won.

By 1998, the Germans had their eyes on the 2006 World Cup, which was secured. Otto Hoehne, president of the Berlin Soccer Association, spoke in favour of building a new stadium in Berlin, with modern hospitality boxes and all the luxuries of recently constructed stadia. The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying: “The Roman Colosseum is nice, but you wouldn’t want to play games in it.”

In 1994, England called off a game against Germany that was supposed to take place there on April 20, which happened to be Hitler’s birthday, for fear it would attract neo-Nazis. The Professional Footballers’ Association — the players’ trade union in England — had raised concerns, while the German football headquarters had windows smashed in by activists opposed to the game taking place, who also sprayed slogans reading, ‘No match on April 20’.

Glass says: “There was not a serious discussion to demolish the Olympiastadion. It was rather, ‘Shall we use it, or shall we build a new one?’ We were pretty aware that we were entering, let’s say, shaky ground in terms of the history of the building. And in parallel, while we were building the stadium or rebuilding the stadium, we were putting a lot of pressure on the German Bundestag (parliament), together with the German Historic Museum and the Berlin Senate, to build a small museum or exhibition that deals with the political history of the whole space.”

The stadium was renovated and its roof added in time for that 2006 World Cup, at a cost of €242million (£204m/$260m at current exchange rates), and the venue was granted five-star status by both FIFA , football’s world governing body, and UEFA, its European equivalent.

Our tour guide, while showing visitors around the dressing rooms, points out that one FIFA requirement is “every changing room needs this device”, while holding an adjustable hairdryer. He smiles: “Very important for professional football players.”

Since then, we have seen Zidane’s headbutt in the final of the 2006 World Cup, and Bolt’s record-breaking feats in the 2009 World Championships — which also happened to be the same competition in which South Africa’s Caster Semenya, then only 18 years old, won the women’s 800m race, which subsequently became one of the defining talking points of the sport over the following decade due to a gender controversy.

Back to football, and Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund memorably beat Bayern Munich in the German Cup final here in 2012, while Messi and Luis Suarez , then of Barcelona, defeated Paul Pogba and Andrea Pirlo’s Juventus three years later.

The past is forever etched into history, but over the coming month, a new tapestry will be woven into Europe’s most contentious sporting venue.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: John Bradford) (1936 | 2024 Illustration: ullstein bild via Getty Images, Inaki Esnaola/Getty Images) (Additional Photos:ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Get all-access to exclusive stories.

Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us.

Adam Crafton covers football for The Athletic. He previously wrote for the Daily Mail. In 2018, he was named the Young Sports Writer of the Year by the Sports' Journalist Association. His debut book,"From Guernica to Guardiola", charting the influence of Spaniards in English football, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018. He is based in London.