This list ranks 25 venues by the year they first opened, and kept operating ever since. It’s a mixed bag on purpose: concert halls, football grounds, college stadiums, and one amusement park, all judged the same way — by the calendar, not by category. If a building or site has been hosting crowds continuously since some point in the 1800s or early 1900s, it earned a spot here.
The top of the list is tighter than you’d expect. Bataclan in Paris opened in 1865 and holds the record by just five years over a two-way tie between Cedar Point and Vienna’s Musikverein in 1870, with Royal Albert Hall arriving barely a year after that in 1871. After that opening cluster, the list stretches forward in a long, steady march through concert halls and sports grounds, before a pile-up of American college football stadiums built during the 1920s construction boom closes it out.
The 1860s and 1870s: Where It All Started
Bataclan has been a fixture of Paris nightlife since 1865, making it the oldest name on this list by a wide margin over most of the field, if not over its closest rivals. Just five years later, two very different venues opened within the same year: Cedar Point, the Lake Erie amusement park now nicknamed America’s Roller Coast, and Musikverein in Vienna, the gilded concert hall famous worldwide for the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert. A year after that, Royal Albert Hall opened in London and has hosted everything from classical concerts to boxing ever since.
What’s notable is how little separates these four. Six years cover the entire top of the list, which tells you these venues weren’t built decades apart in isolated eras — they were all products of the same wave of 19th-century public building, just in different cities and for different purposes.
| # | Name | year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bataclan | 1865 |
| 2 | Cedar Point | 1870 |
| 3 | Musikverein | 1870 |
| 4 | Royal Albert Hall | 1871 |
| 5 | Stamford Bridge | 1877 |
| 6 | Anfield | 1884 |
| 7 | Webster Hall | 1886 |
| 8 | Carnegie Hall | 1891 |
| 9 | L’Olympia Paris | 1893 |
| 10 | Symphony Hall Boston | 1900 |
| 11 | Ravinia Festival | 1904 |
| 12 | Forbes Field | 1909 |
| 13 | Old Trafford | 1910 |
| 14 | Bobby Dodd Stadium | 1913 |
| 15 | Crystal Ballroom Portland | 1914 |
| 16 | Nippert Stadium | 1915 |
| 17 | Camp Randall Stadium | 1917 |
| 18 | Max M. Fisher Music Center | 1919 |
| 19 | Husky Stadium | 1920 |
| 20 | Neyland Stadium | 1921 |
| 21 | Ohio Stadium | 1922 |
| 22 | Rose Bowl Stadium | 1922 |
| 23 | Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium | 1924 |
| 24 | Michie Stadium | 1924 |
| 25 | Ross–Ade Stadium | 1924 |
What ‘Oldest’ Actually Means Here
Every venue on this list has been renovated, expanded, or rebuilt in parts at some point — that’s normal and doesn’t disqualify a spot in the ranking. The year that counts is when the site first opened to the public and started operating, not the age of the current roof or seating bowl. That’s why a place like Cedar Point, which has replaced and added rides continuously for over 150 years, still ranks by its 1870 opening rather than by the age of any individual ride.
It also explains why the list reads the way it does: concert halls and football grounds tend to open once and stay put for a century or more, while amusement parks are built for constant change. Cedar Point is the outlier of the group for exactly that reason — it’s the one venue here whose whole identity is built around replacing itself, ride by ride, while the property underneath keeps its 1870 birthday.
The Surprises Further Down the List
Look past the top five and the list turns into a run of English football grounds and American sports venues opening roughly a decade apart — Stamford Bridge in 1877, Anfield in 1884, Old Trafford in 1910 — before American college football takes over entirely. Four stadiums alone opened in 1922 and 1924: Ohio Stadium, Rose Bowl Stadium, and then a three-way tie in 1924 between Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, Michie Stadium, and Ross–Ade Stadium. That cluster reflects a real building boom — college programs across the country raced to put up permanent concrete stadiums in the same few years. Ravinia Festival, which opened in 1904 as an outdoor summer venue near Chicago, is worth a mention too, since it proves this list isn’t only about buildings with roofs.
Explore more: Cedar Point’s roller coaster lineup.
Oldest Venues Still in Use FAQs
What is the oldest venue still in use in the world?
On this list, that’s Bataclan in Paris, which opened in 1865 and remains an active concert venue today.
What is the oldest amusement park still operating?
Cedar Point, which opened in 1870 on Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, is one of the oldest amusement parks still operating anywhere in the world.
Why do so many stadiums on this list open in the 1920s?
American college football went through a major stadium-building boom in the early 1920s, as programs replaced wooden bleachers with permanent concrete structures — which is why Ohio Stadium, Rose Bowl Stadium, and three separate 1924 stadiums all land near the bottom of this list.
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Photo by Minh Ng on Unsplash.