Villa Park

The pitch stands on the site of the Dovehouse Pool, an ornamental pond drained in 1889. The land had been the kitchen garden of Aston Hall's owner Sir Thomas Holte, whose name the Holte End carries, and by the Victorian period the Lower Grounds were an amusement park with an aquarium. A cycle track and sports ground opened there on 10 June 1889 before a crowd of 15,000.

Aston Villa's home at Wellington Road suffered an uneven pitch, poor facilities and exorbitant rents. In 1894 a club committee led by Frederick Rinder opened negotiations, agreeing two years later to rent the site from Flower & Sons with an option to buy. The almost-complete stadium opened on 17 April 1897 with a 3–0 friendly win over Blackburn Rovers, a week after Villa completed the League and FA Cup double; it held 40,000, most standing in the open.

The championship of 1899 and a record average crowd of 21,000 funded improvements that re-laid the terracing to remedy a design flaw spoiling sightlines for most of the crowd. In 1911 Villa bought the freehold for £8,250.

In June 1914 the cycling track was removed and the terracing re-profiled around a newly squared-off pitch, and Rinder turned to the architect Archibald Leitch to redesign the ground. The First World War severely hampered the work. The new Trinity Road Stand was begun in April 1922, and the Duke of York, later George VI, opened it on 26 January 1924, telling Rinder he had “no idea that a ground so finely equipped in every way—and devoted to football—existed.” Its Oak Room was the first restaurant at a British football ground. The works came to £89,000, a sum that enraged the directors, who ordered an investigation into the cost and in 1925 forced Rinder's resignation.

Rinder was voted back onto the board in 1936 at the age of 78 and revived the masterplan he had drawn up in 1914. He died in December 1938, Leitch having died that April, and the rebuilding of the Holte End begun in early 1939 was supervised by Archibald Junior.

Construction stopped nationally when war broke out in September 1939, but Villa obtained a special permit to carry on at the Holte End. The stand was finished in April 1940 and immediately mothballed. The Trinity Road Stand became an air-raid shelter and ammunition store, the home dressing room housed a rifle company of the 9th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and German bombs did £20,000 of damage to the Witton Lane Stand, remedied by 1954. The highest attendance recorded there was 76,588, for an FA Cup tie against Derby County on 2 March 1946.

Floodlights were first used in November 1958 for a friendly against Heart of Midlothian, and in 1962 a £40,000 roof went onto the Holte End. FIFA chose Villa Park for three matches of the 1966 World Cup on condition that the Witton Lane Stand was made all-seater. From 1969 the new chairman Doug Ellis modernised the stadium; the Witton End rebuild and wider works of 1976–77 cost £1.3 million.

The Taylor Report of January 1990, which followed the Hillsborough disaster and its 96 deaths, recommended that major grounds be all-seater by August 1994. The Witton Lane Stand was replaced by January 1994 and renamed the Doug Ellis Stand; demolition of the Holte End began on the last day of the 1993–94 season, and its two-tier replacement seated 13,501. The 1922 Trinity Road Stand came down in 2000, and its replacement was opened in November 2001 by Prince Charles, whose grandfather George VI had opened the old one 77 years earlier.

Villa Park has staged 55 FA Cup semi-finals, more than any other stadium, and has hosted England internationals from 1899, three matches of the 1966 World Cup, four of Euro 96 and two pool matches of the 2015 Rugby World Cup. On 28 June 1948 Dick Turpin beat Vince Hawkins to become the first non-white boxer to win a British title, after the British Boxing Board of Control lifted its ban on non-whites challenging for titles. Billy Graham drew 257,181 people to prayer meetings in mid-1984, and on 5 July 2025 the ground hosted Black Sabbath's final concert; Ozzy Osbourne died 17 days later, and his funeral procession set out from Villa Park on 30 July.

The club has owned the freehold since 1911 and the ground seats 43,205. Birmingham City Council approved an expansion of the North Stand on 28 August 2025, reusing the existing structure, to take capacity above 50,000; the club treats the work, due for completion by August 2027, as essential to retaining its place in the UEFA Euro 2028 line-up.