Prada Opens Rong Zhai, a Restored 1918 Mansion in Shanghai

Prada opened Rong Zhai to the public on 17 October 2017. The house is a Western-style garden villa of 1918 on North Shaanxi Road, in the Jing’an district of Shanghai, which the Italian group spent six years restoring. It is not a shop. Prada uses it for exhibitions, talks and occasional shows, and it is one of the most careful restorations of a private house in the city.

The house of the Flour King

The villa was the home of Yung Tsoong-King (Rong Zongjing, 1873-1938), who with his brother built an empire of flour and cotton mills and was known as the Flour King of China. The Rong family remained one of the country’s most prominent business dynasties through the 20th century. The house reflects the taste of Shanghai’s merchant elite of the period: a symmetrical European facade with columns and balconies, and inside, carved wood panelling, stained glass, decorated plaster ceilings and patterned tiles in a mixture of Western and Chinese motifs.

After 1949 the building passed through institutional uses and was subdivided and altered. By the time Prada took on the project in 2011, much of the decoration was damaged or hidden.

The restoration

The work was led for Prada by the architect Roberto Baciocchi and carried out by Italian and Chinese craftsmen working together. Plasterwork, timber and glass were repaired rather than replaced wherever the original survived, and missing elements were remade using the techniques of the time. The stained-glass skylight above the former ballroom and the tiled sunroom are the most photographed results. The approach followed the group’s earlier restoration work in Italy, notably the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan.

The opening

Prada marked the completion with a showing of its Resort 2018 collection in the house on 12 October 2017 and an opening reception on 14 October, during Shanghai Fashion Week, before public visits began on 17 October.

Since then

Rong Zhai has hosted exhibitions organised with Fondazione Prada, including a presentation of paintings by Liu Ye in 2018, and events connected with the brand’s shows. In 2025 Prada added a restaurant in the house, Mi Shang, conceived with the film director Wong Kar Wai.

The house is open only during exhibitions, with free entry by reservation, so visitors should check the programme before planning around it. It is a short walk from West Nanjing Road and pairs well with Louis Vuitton’s ship-shaped pavilion on the same street, a very different idea of how a fashion house occupies the city.