UEFA Women's Champtions League

I was invited down to the Artemio Franchi stadium - formally named after a local Fascist as it was built in the 1930s but now after an ex-leader of the Communist Youth Federation (FGCI) - to see a game between Fiorentina and Fortuna Hjorring in the women's UEFA Champions League. The Violas won 2-1.

The stadium holds 50,000 people and is open to the weather on three sides. It was a balmy evening but it began to get chilly late in the second half.

My thanks to TriplerA who organised the tickets and galvanised me into going.

I arrived early and had a hot pork roll, an coffee espresso and surprisingly large measure of Grappa. Thus fortified we went through the tight security to take our seats below the reinforced concrete pinnacle that is the Marathon Tower - a Fascist throw-back to the Ancient Greek world.

The stadium is one of Florence's 20th century architectural gems - a graceful amphitheatre of concrete supported by surprisingly thin pillars and buttresses with the most delightful winding, suspended stairs. A reminder of that very modernist/Futurist wing of the Italian Fascist aesthetic.