The Quidditch World Cup Stadium

"Every time Muggles have got anywhere near here all year, they've suddenly remembered urgent appointments and had to dash away...bless them."
     -- Arthur Weasley

Quidditch World Cup map
diagram of the stadium

The Ministry of Magic spent a year magically constructing a huge stadium for the Quidditch World Cup in August, 1994 [Y14].

• approach through a wood, a twenty-minute walk along a lantern-lit trail
• immense gold walls
• ten cathedrals would fit comfortably inside it
• seats 100,000 people
• Ministry task force of 500 worked on it for a year
• Muggle-Repelling Charms on every inch of it
• Top Box provides the prime seats: about 20 purple and gilt chairs
• large parchment tickets
• located on a "nice, deserted moor." (GF6)
• stagger the arrivals: people with cheap tickets had to arrive two weeks early
• a few use Muggle transport to get there, but most use Portkeys or Apparate.
• two hundred Portkeys around Britain
• suffused with a mysterious golden light which seems to come from the stadium itself
• giant blackboard opposite Top Box which is a score board and also shows advertising
• velvet-covered, tasseled programs

There is some inconsistency in dates with the World Cup. In GF8, Ludo Bagman welcomes everyone to the "four hundred and twenty second Quidditch World Cup". However, Quidditch through the Ages sets forth the history of the World Cup competition. It says that the Cup was first held in 1473, and held every 4 years since. That means that the Cup had been held around 130 times by 1994 [Y14]. Not even close to 422. Also, if the Cup has been held every four years from 1473, then 1993 [Y13] and 1997 [Y17] would have been Cup-years, not 1994, which is a problem with the timeline, as it currently exists.