From 2015 the Fendi luxury fashion house will be based in Rome's Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the landmark building in EUR which recently hosted Giorgio Armani’s One Night Only event.

Fendi has signed a 15-year lease at a annual cost of €2.8 million, or about €240,000 per month to the EUR SpA company, 90 per cent of which is controlled by Italy's finance ministry and 10 per cent by Rome's city administration.

Fendi will lease the travertine-clad building's 12,000 sqm spread out over six floors, with at least 400 Fendi employees working in the top five floors. The ground floor will be reserved for exhibitions devoted to Italian creativity and craftsmanship, according to the firm's chief executive officer Pietro Beccari who said Fendi is "more and more devoted to the city", a reference to the fashion house's commitment to restore the Trevi Fountain among other fountains in the capital.

The move will also coincide with the 90th anniversary of the Italian fashion brand, founded by Adele Fendi in 1925 on Rome's Via del Plebiscito and bought by multinational company LVMH in 2005.

With its 54 arches on each side of its façade, the imposing fascist-era structure, known by many as the Colosseo Quadrato or Square Colosseum, is considered one of the finest representations of fascist architecture. Constructed for the 1942 world fair in EUR, it was inaugurated while still incomplete in 1940 and finished following world war two. The building was renovated between 2003 and 2008.