Stadio dei Cipressi & Stadio Olimpico

In 1926 the Fascist regime, which saw sport as an effective propaganda tool, revised Rome's 1909 city plan to take in an 85-hectare sports complex on marshland below Monte Mario. The Foro Italico was commissioned by the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the regime's youth body, and work began in 1928 under the architect Enrico Del Debbio. The Stadio dei Cipressi opened to the public on 22 October 1932 for the tenth anniversary of Fascism, short of its planned capacity of 100,000; the official opening came on 4 November, the fourteenth anniversary of the Italian victory in the First World War, with a gymnastics display by the Fascist youth groups.

From 1933 Luigi Moretti extended it in concrete for a Roman bid for the 1940 Olympics, and the enlarged ground opened on 9 May 1937, the first anniversary of the Italian Empire. Ownership passed to the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio, and it served chiefly as a stage for regime occasions: a parade in 1938 welcoming Adolf Hitler on his state visit, and in September 1941 a military celebration of the Tripartite Pact between Italy, Germany and Japan.

Planned extensions were cut short by the war, and after Allied forces entered Rome in 1944 the troops used the ground for vehicle storage and inter-Allied sports events. The Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) was then appointed operator. The engineer Carlo Roccatelli and the architect Cesare Valle led the rebuilding, and Annibale Vitellozzi took over after Roccatelli's death in 1951, completing a travertine-clad concrete bowl whose pitch was sunk below ground level so that it would not dominate the Foro Italico's skyline.

President Luigi Einaudi opened it on 17 May 1953 as the Stadio dei Centomila, for the capacity it was meant to reach; Hungary beat Italy 3–0, Nándor Hidegkuti scoring the first goal in the ground. Lazio and Roma have played most of their home matches there since, and in 1954 the stadium held the rugby European Cup final.

Rome was awarded the 1960 Olympics in 1955, and the name Olimpico replaced dei Centomila. The opening ceremony of the seventeenth Olympiad came on 25 August 1960, and Wilma Rudolph won three golds on the track.

The 1968 European Championship final brought the only replay in the tournament's history, Italy beating Yugoslavia 2–0 two days after a 1–1 draw, and Liverpool won the 1977 European Cup final here. In 1979 a rocket fired from a homemade weapon killed a spectator, Vincenzo Paparelli. West Germany won the 1980 European Championship final, and Liverpool returned in 1984 to beat Roma in the first European Cup final settled by a penalty shootout.

Rome's choice of venue for the 1990 World Cup final was a political dispute: expanding the Stadio Flaminio was dropped for lack of space and a new ground would have taken too long. CONI engaged Vitellozzi, whose plan of early 1987 roofed the stadium and lifted capacity to 85,825. In November 1987 Italia Nostra, Legambiente and WWF Italia appealed against the 40-metre roof pillars as landscape damage, and in January 1988 Lazio's administrative court stopped the works; the architects lowered the pillars and the appeal was rescinded.

The rebuilt stadium was finished in April 1990, seating 85,000, with little of the old ground left beyond part of the Tevere façade and a new Teflon and fibreglass roof membrane. A later analysis put the renovation at about 450 billion lire, which appeal-court experts judged tainted by possible irregularities in the tender. On 8 July 1990 West Germany beat Argentina in the final through an Andreas Brehme penalty six minutes from time.

In 1994 a mafia attack on the stadium during a Roma match failed; it could have killed an unspecified number of civilians and police officers. The Ministry of Economy and Finance, owner since 1976, transferred the whole Foro Italico to its agency Coni Servizi on 3 February 2004. Renamed Sport e Salute in 2019, that state agency owns the stadium, and CONI operates it.

Chosen for the 2009 Champions League final, CONI renovated the ground in 2007–08, cutting capacity to 70,634, second in Italy to Milan's San Siro. The Coppa Italia final has been played here since 2008, except in 2021, and Italy's rugby team moved its Six Nations home here from the Stadio Flaminio, first playing England on 11 February 2012. Rome held three group matches and a quarter-final of the 2020 European Championship, played in 2021 after the pandemic postponement, and the European Athletics Championships returned in June 2024.