On the occasion of the 1960 Olympic Games, Pier Luigi Nervi was called upon to build three sports facilities and a viaduct to serve the athletes’ village; these included the Sports Arena, designed with Annibale Vitellozzi in 1956. The building, on a circular plan, consists of a spherical dome on a crown of thirty-six Y-shaped trestles; the roof, formed by 1,620 prefabricated reinforced concrete elements stiffened by a cast-in-place slab, appears perfectly smooth on the outside revealing, on the inside, the structure made up of large rhomboidal squares.

The building was realised in just 14 months by Nervi & Bartoli and is a clear example of Pier Luigi Nervi’s engineering mastery and the efficiency of the design processes of his studio and company. MAXXI conserves 3 drawings of the project, executive details, and 76 photocopies, which were invaluable for the reconstruction of the study model of the building site. Realised in 2010 on the occasion of the exhibition at MAXXI dedicated to Pier Luigi Nervi, in the Rome section. Using ingenuity and construction, the model retraces the construction phases of the building and illustrates the main techniques used on the building site; it is also conserved in the architecture collections, with drawings, photocopies, and, lastly, a photographic panel showing the commemorative stamp of the 17^th Games with the Arena in the background.