Italian Style Town

Italian Style Town occupies the former Italian concession granted to the Kingdom of Italy in 1902 following the Boxer Protocol, making it the only Italian concession ever established in East Asia and one of the best-preserved examples of Italian colonial-era urban planning outside Italy. Italian architect and engineer Ing. Daniele designed the district in the early 1900s-1910s around a central piazza, Marco Polo Square, with radiating streets lined with stuccoed villas, arched loggias and terracotta-roofed buildings modelled on northern Italian towns. Warlord Yuan Shikai and general Cao Kun both maintained residences here during the district's early-20th-century heyday as a haven for Chinese political and military figures navigating Tianjin's patchwork of foreign concessions. The concession reverted to Chinese control in the 1940s and the area fell into disrepair before Tianjin municipal authorities carried out a major restoration between 2005 and 2008, repainting facades, restoring the piazza and converting many buildings into restaurants, bars and boutique hotels while preserving the original street grid and building envelopes. The restoration prioritised the district's original architectural details -- wrought-iron balconies, arched windows and columned porticoes -- over reconstruction from scratch, since the majority of the 1910s-20s building stock had survived, if deteriorated. Today the area functions primarily as a dining and nightlife district built around its historic shell, with informational plaques on former Republican-era residences scattered through the piazza and side streets.