Prada Rong Mansion of Rong's Old House on Shanghai Bund

Rong Mansion is located in Jing'an District, Shaanxi Road North 186, it is a famous entrepreneur in Shanghai "flour king" Rong Zongjing (1873-1938 Rong Zongjing is Rong Yiren's uncle) of the former residence, the main building was completed in 1918, the original owner of the house for the Germans, returned to his country after the defeat of the First World War, the house will be Rong Zongjing bought, and his family lived here in the 20s and 30s of the last century, the red roofed mansion is also one of the most elegant buildings in Shanghai. Rong Zongjing and his family lived here in the 1920s and 1930s, and the red-roofed mansion is one of the most elegant buildings in Shanghai.

The main fa?ade is a two-storey open gallery of columns, identified by the tops of the columns, which cover the three ancient Greek styles of columns: Doric (columns topped with flat panels), Ionic (simple scroll-shaped decoration) and Corinthian (columns topped with leaf-shaped decoration). So why is it associated with the luxury brand Prada? It turns out that Prada took a liking to 186 North Shaanxi Road, purchased the right to use it for 10 years, and since 2011, a team of Chinese and Italian experts have been working together for six years to renovate the old mansion and bring it back to its glory.

The wooden fireplace is surrounded by carvings, with neoclassical elements and Chinese details. When restoring the fireplace, craftsmen are said to have carefully stripped away the lacquer, repaired broken or missing parts with new wood, treated it to match the original surface, and then stained all the parts and sealed them with natural beeswax.

The room has a 15-square-meter skylight of relatively well-preserved old stained glass. The design on the skylight combines a variety of geometric shapes, as well as traditional botanical decorative motifs. The Italian craftsmen responsible for restoring the skylight replaced the damaged part with a type of stained glass made in Germany in the 1940s, using a traditional technique for treating glass panels that has been handed down by glassblowers over the centuries.

The Wing residence's floors feature multicolored hexagonal glazed tiles, and Italian artisans reset missing and broken floor tiles using an ancient craft. In order to fire the glazed tiles, the craftsmen first modeled the original century-old tiles, reformulated the porcelain clay used to mix the colors, poured them by hand, and backfilled them. The final calcination is fused.

Rong House covers an area of 4,173 square meters, of which the garden area of 2,475 square meters, is currently used as Prada's art exhibition center.