Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice

From the 13th century onward, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge served German merchants as a trading post for Italy and the whole of the Mediterranean region. The building, which was erected in 1508 after two fires, also served as a customs office and a post office over the centuries. An application to convert it into a shopping centre was refused in 2016.

 Fondaco dei tedeschi di sera, colour photograph, 2013, photographer: Moroder; source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fondaco_dei_tedeschi_di_sera.jpg, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en.