OMA-designed fondaco dei tedeschi store in venice closes its doors

Fondaco dei Tedeschi closes almost ten years after oma’s revamp

After nearly a decade of operation, the OMA–renovated Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice shuts its doors (find designboom’s previous coverage here). Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) Group, the LVMH-owned travel retailer that runs the department store, posts a quiet notice on its website: ‘As of May 1, 2025, our store will be closed.’ The news is followed by a farewell post on Instagram, thanking friends and customers for the years of shared experiences.

Venice was home to DFS’s only store in Europe, a space that regularly hosted art installations, exhibitions, concerts, and cultural events, particularly on its rooftop and in the central courtyard. Locals often used the historic building as a shortcut between Campo San Bartolomeo and the Rialto, while tourists were drawn in as much for the panoramic views as for the luxury shopping.

all images by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti © OMA, unless stated otherwise

the history behind the 800-year-old building

The closure, announced in November 2024, ends a project that aimed to rewire a 13th-century monument for 21st-century life. Located at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, across from the fish market, the Fondaco started life as a trading hub for German merchants, later became a customs house under Napoleon, and under Mussolini, a fascist post office. Over the centuries it burned down twice, was rebuilt, stripped of its towers, filled in with concrete, and altered so heavily that by the time the international design practice OMA stepped in, little of its original structure remained untouched. Still, in 1987, it gained protected monument status, freezing further transformation in place.

OMA’s approach, led by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Rem Koolhaas, and Silvia Sandor, treated the building as a palimpsest, layered and messy. Their renovation, commissioned by the Benetton family in 2009, carved out new public paths through the mass, added a hovering steel-and-glass floor over the central courtyard, and revived the rooftop by transforming a 19th-century pavilion into a wooden terrace with panoramic views over Venice.

the OMA–renovated Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice shuts its doors

as DFS departs, a new chapter begins

Inside, they opened up vertical circulation with new escalators, retained key historic rooms, and reinstated the gallerias as surfaces for frescoes, this time in contemporary form. The courtyard, once closed to the city, became a kind of indoor campo, a public piazza at the heart of the structure.

DFS operated the space as a luxury department store, but that is only part of the story. OMA’s design was also about public access, civic energy, and rethinking what a monument can be. It avoided nostalgia and challenged the idea that heritage buildings must be static or sacred. With DFS gone, the future of the building is uncertain. Its protected status severely limits what can be altered, but its history shows that the Fondaco always adapts.

the space that regularly hosted art installations, exhibitions, concerts, and cultural events