In their 13 matches in Dortmund, Germany have 12 victories and just one draw -- 1-1 against Wales in December 1977.

The stadium was extensively renovated in 1998.

Giddy over their success in the 1990s and eager to supplant Bayern Munich as Germany's premier team, Dortmund raised the capacity of the stadium built for the 1974 World Cup from 54,000.

With a million spectators each year, Dortmund sit atop the statistics for Bundesliga attendance even though the team have slid from the top of the table.

During the course of the renovations, construction workers found an unexploded 1,000-pound (450 kg) bomb dropped by an Allied bomber in World War Two that was only about one metre below the halfway line on the pitch.

Bomb disposal experts had to evacuate the stadium and surrounding neighbourhood in Dortmund, which as part of Germany's industrial centre was bombed heavily, before taking an hour to defuse the device.

HEART CHAMBER

Dortmund was founded in 880 and it prospered through the Middle Ages. Today it is the largest city in the Ruhr Valley region, where six million people live.

Dortmund has long been the "capital city" of the centre-left Social Democrat Party (SPD), reliably delivering the party its strongest support. Former SPD chancellor Willy Brandt dubbed the city the party's "Herzkammer" (heart chamber).

The mines are mostly gone and even the DAB beer brewery on the northern edge of town is only a shadow of its former self. The SPD is also on the decline and can no longer deliver the levels of support near 70 percent that it once did.

Prostitution, which is legal in Germany, has been in the headlines in Dortmund ahead of the World Cup as well. City authorities set up a controversial area with "car pens" where prostitutes could take clients and equipped them with emergency buttons to call police for help.

Dortmund, a city with many modest incomes, has come up with a novel idea for visitors with modest amounts of money to spend. The authorities set up a "Fan Village" in the Westfallenhalle arena where 4,000 fans can sleep for 35 euros per night.

Dortmund is one of three venues in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany's most populous state with 16 million residents. Gelsenkirchen, just 30 km to the west, is Dortmund's most bitter rival, in soccer as in almost everything else.

Cologne to the south is the third NRW city to host World Cup matches, although other cities such as Duesseldorf and Moenchengladbach had also built new stadiums in the hope of being picked among the 12 venues.