Beaver Stadium is one of the largest sports venues on earth and the centrepiece of Penn State's legendary football culture. On autumn Saturdays when the Nittany Lions are at home, the stadium fills with over 106,000 fans and the population of the surrounding Centre County effectively doubles. The atmosphere on game day is extraordinary even if you have no particular interest in American football — tailgating starts hours before kickoff across the vast parking lots, and the roar when the team takes the field carries across the valley.
Tours of the stadium are available on non-game days, giving you access to the field, the locker rooms, and press boxes that offer a dizzying sense of the structure's scale. The football season runs September through November; tickets are hard to come by for major games but can sometimes be found through the university box office or resellers. If you cannot get to a game, even a walk around the outside of the stadium on a quiet weekday conveys something of its monumental presence.