Fendi inaugurates head office in EUR.

The luxury fashion house Fendi inaugurated its new headquarters at Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the landmark building in the south Rome suburb EUR, on 22 October with a gala dinner for 250, including Italy's minister for constitutional reform, Maria Elena Boschi.

Fendi is celebrating its move to the fascist-era building, known by many as the Colosseo Quadrato or Square Colosseum, with an exhibition which is open to the public from 23 October until 7 March.

Entitled A New Rome: the EUR and the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the exhibition features drawings, paintings, films and photographs by important 20th-century Italian architects, artists, filmmakers and photographers, illustrating developments in EUR during the 1930s and 1940s.

The imposing building in EUR is considered one of the finest representations of fascist architecture (see magazine cover of October issue of Wanted in Rome) but has rarely been used in its 75-year history. Constructed for the 1942 world fair in EUR, it was finished following world war two. The building was renovated between 2003 and 2008.

In 2013 Fendi 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's lease covers all six storeys of the 84,000-sqm travertine-clad building. The firm's creative directors Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi will work on the top floor.

Fendi's move to the 60m-high Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Italian fashion brand. Fendi chief Pietro Beccari said the brand, which is now owned by the French luxury goods chain MVLH is moving to position itself as fundamentally Roman, saying that it is “more and more devoted to the city”, a reference to its funding of the €2 million, 18-month restoration of the Trevi Fountain, which will be unveiled on 3 November.