Olympic Stadium & Montreal Tower

Built for the 1976 Olympics, the stadium is attached to the world's tallest inclined tower.

Attached to it is the Montreal Tower, 165 metres high and leaning at 45 degrees. It is described as the tallest inclined tower in the world. The stadium holds about 56,000 people and hosts concerts, trade shows and sports. Taillibert based the building on plant and animal forms, and it is cited as a masterpiece of Organic Modern architecture.

Planning and building

Montreal's mayor Jean Drapeau wanted a covered stadium as early as 1963, partly to win a baseball team. Taillibert's design had a roof that would open and close using cables from the huge leaning tower. Building was hit by strikes, rising costs and Montreal's cold winters. The stadium was still unfinished when the 1976 Games opened, and the tower and roof were not completed until 1987.

A very expensive stadium

The first cost estimate in 1970 was 134 million Canadian dollars. By the time the stadium opened unfinished, costs had risen to about 1.1 billion. A special tobacco tax helped pay for it, and the debt was finally paid off in 2006. The total came to about 1.61 billion. That is why Montrealers also called it the Big Owe.

The troubled roof

The first retractable roof, made of Kevlar fabric, tore often and could not be used in winds above 40 kilometres per hour. It opened and closed only 88 times and was removed in 1998. A piece of the concrete roof fell in 1999. A new roof is being built, now estimated at 870 million dollars.

The Montreal Expos baseball team played here from 1977 to 2004. Today an inclined elevator carries visitors up the tower's spine to an observatory in under two minutes.

On the globe

The model shows the stadium bowl and its slanting tower. Look for the lean of the tower.