Stade Roland Garros
Stade Roland Garros is a complex of tennis courts, including stadiums, located in Paris that hosts the French Open. That tournament, also known as Roland Garros, is a major tennis championship played annually in late May and early June. The complex is named after Roland Garros, a pioneering French aviator, and was constructed in 1928 to host France's first defence of the Davis Cup.
The 13.5-hectare complex contains twenty courts, including three large-capacity stadiums; Les Jardins de Roland Garros, a large restaurant and bar complex; Le Village, the press and VIP area; France's National Training Centre ; and the Tenniseum, a bilingual, multimedia museum of the history of tennis.
Dedication
The facility is named after Roland Garros, a pilot who completed the first solo flight across the Mediterranean Sea, engineer, and World War I hero who shot down four enemy aircraft. Garros was killed in aerial combat in October 1918.History
France was an important power in tennis during the first half of the 20th century due to the dominance of Suzanne Lenglen during the 1910s and 1920s, and les Quatre Mousquetaires —Jacques "Toto" Brugnon, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet, and René Lacoste —in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1927, France defeated the United States to win the Davis Cup, due largely to the Musketeers' efforts. Stade Roland Garros was constructed as a venue for France's successful defense the following year. France retained the Cup until 1933, again largely because of the Musketeers. A monument to France's six Cup championships stands at the center of Place des Mousquetaires, a circular courtyard near the venue's entrance.In October 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the facility was used as a detention centre where "indésirables"—mostly Hungarians, Russians, Italians, Poles, and citizens suspected of being communists—were held pending imprisonment. Journalist and former communist Arthur Koestler reported that at the time of his detention, posters advertising the last match prior to the outbreak of war, between Cochet and Borotra, were still in place.
Playing surface
While the Stade Roland Garros surface is invariably characterized as "red clay", the courts are in fact surfaced with white limestone covered with a few millimeters of powdered red brick dust. Beneath the layer of porous limestone is of volcanic rock, followed by of sand, all of which rests on a slab of concrete. Crushed brick is pressed onto the limestone surface with rollers, then drenched in water. The process is repeated several times until a thin, compact layer coats each court. The crushed brick is deep enough to allow footprints and ball marks, but shallow enough to avoid making the court spongy or slippery. In tournaments workers smooth the surface before matches and between sets by dragging rectangular lengths of chain-link across it. The red brick dust is replenished as needed.The surface was a state-of-the art solution, in 1928, to the biggest problem with natural clay courts: poor drainage. At the time it was not unusual for clay surfaces to be unplayable for two to three days after even short periods of precipitation. The limestone/crushed brick combination, originally developed in Great Britain, played and looked similar to clay without clay's drainage issues, thus rendering natural clay obsolete as a tennis court surface. Since then a multitude of other "fast-dry" and synthetic clay surfaces have been developed. Courts surfaced with these materials play much like natural clay surfaces and are collectively classified as "clay courts", despite the fact that few if any true clay courts have been built for almost a century. The diversity in composition of various "clay" surfaces around the world explains the extraordinary variability in their playing characteristics. Venus Williams has said: "All clay courts are different. None play the same. plays the best."
Stadium courts
Court Philippe Chatrier
Court Philippe Chatrier was built in 1928 as Stade Roland Garros's centerpiece and remains its principal venue. It seats 15,225 spectators as of a 2019 renovation. The stadium was known simply as "Court Central" until 2001 when it was renamed for the long-time president of the Fédération Française de Tennis who helped restore tennis as a Summer Olympics sport in 1988.The four main spectator grandstands are named for the Four Musketeers—Brugnon, Borotra, Cochet, and Lacoste—in honor of their Davis Cup success, which prompted construction of the facility, and the stadium. As a further tribute, the trophy awarded each year to the French Open men's singles champion is known as La Coupe des Mousquetaires.
After the completion of the 2018 tournament, the stadium was demolished down to its foundations and rebuilt with steeper grandstands in time for the 2019 tournament. A retractable roof and floodlights were added in time for the 2020 tournament, which was delayed to September of that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2025, on the first day of the 2025 French Open, a new plaque commemorating Rafael Nadal's 14 Roland Garros trophies was unveiled on the stadium's soil. The ceremony occurred in the presence of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray, who came to pay tribute to Nadal's career.
Court Suzanne Lenglen
Built in 1994 and originally designated "Court A", Court Suzanne Lenglen is the secondary stadium with a capacity of 10,068 spectators. Its namesake, an international celebrity and the first true star of women's tennis, won 31 major tournaments, including six French Open titles and six Wimbledon championships, between 1914 and 1926. Known as La Divine and La Grand Dame of French tennis, she won two Olympic gold medals in Antwerp in 1920. A bronze bas relief of Lenglen by the Italian sculptor Vito Tongiani stands over the east tunnel-entrance to the stadium. The trophy awarded each year to the French Open women's singles champion is named La Coupe Suzanne Lenglen in her honor. The court has an underground irrigation system, the first of its kind, to control moisture levels within its surface.In 1994, the walkway between Court Chatrier and Court Lenglen was named Allée Marcel Bernard in honor of the 1940s-era French champion who died that year. A retractable roof that covers the court was installed in time for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games. It was inaugurated on 26 May 2024 on the occasion of the first day of the French Open tennis tournament. It is made up of two lateral structures measuring 100 meters by 20 meters, and a white canvas. The roof closes in 15 minutes. It is inspired by Suzanne Lenglen's pleated skirt, and the structure is equipped with photovoltaic panels.
Court Simonne Mathieu
The 5,000-seat tertiary venue was completed in March 2019. Technically located just outside the Roland Garros compound, but operated as part of the tennis complex, Court Simonne Mathieu was built on the adjacent municipal grounds of the Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil. The court's namesake, Simonne Mathieu, was the 1938 and 1939 women's singles champion who is also remembered as a leader of the French Resistance during the Second World War. The tennis court surface is four meters below ground level with greenhouses integrated on all four sides of the stadium, which blend in with the plant holding greenhouses elsewhere in the municipal garden. Court Simonne Mathieu was built to replace the former Court 1, located inside the tennis complex, which was demolished.Court 1
Court 1, once the facility's third show court or tertiary venue, and nicknamed the "Bullring" because of its circular shape, was demolished in 2019. Its architect, Jean Lovera, a former French junior champion, designed the 3,800-seat structure as a deliberate contrast to the adjacent, angular Court Philippe Chatrier. Built in 1980, the Bullring was a favorite among serious tennis fans because of its relatively small size and feeling of close proximity to the action. An unusual design feature was its press seating in the first row at court level behind the south baseline.Court 1 was the scene of several memorable French Open upsets, such as unseeded Gustavo Kuerten's third-round victory over fifth-seeded former champion Thomas Muster in 1997, on his way to his first of three Open titles; and third-seeded Gabriela Sabatini's defeat — after a 6–1, 5–1 lead and five match points — to Mary Joe Fernandez in the 1993 quarterfinals. It was also the site of Marat Safin's famous "dropped pants" match against Félix Mantilla in 2004.
Demolition of Court 1 began shortly after conclusion of the 2019 tournament and inauguration of the new tertiary venue, Court Simonne Mathieu. In its place, a greatly enlarged Place des Mousquetaires was constructed, where spectators can watch matches on a large video screen.
Tenniseum
Known officially as the Museum of the French Federation of Tennis, the Tenniseum was designed by the French architect Bruno Moinard and opened in May 2003. It is housed in a former groundsman's cottage, and comprises a multimedia center, media library, and permanent and temporary exhibits dedicated to the history of tennis in general, and the French Open in particular.Permanent exhibits include a display of the French Open perpetual trophies, including La Coupe des Mousquetaires and La Coupe Suzanne Lenglen; a narrative and photographic history of Stade Roland Garros; displays documenting the evolution of tennis attire through the years; a comprehensive collection of tennis racquets dating back to the mid-19th century; and a large exhibition of tennis-related photographs and paintings.
The media library houses a diverse collection of documents, posters, books, and magazines, as well as a database of tennis information, statistics, trivia, and match summaries of all French Open tournament matches since 1928. The bilingual multimedia center contains over 4,000 hours of digitized video, including documentaries, interviews with many of the sport's legendary players, and film archives dating from 1897 to the present. Tours are conducted daily. During the French Open, the normal entry fee is waived for tournament ticket-holders.