26 stores · curated ORBIS register
Hamburg's Alsterhaus brings fashion and beauty together with homeware and food in its 1912 Hermann Tietz building. Busan's Bupyeong Kkangtong Market follows a market format instead, with imported goods and food sold through independent stalls. The covered market dates to 1910, offering a different retail arrangement from the department stores alongside it. Italy's Coin began near Venice in 1916, developing from Vittorio Coin's licensed trade in fabrics.
Neustadt, Hamburg
A historic department store selling fashion, beauty products, accessories, homeware, and gourmet food across five floors. The building opened in 1912 as the Hermann Tietz department store and was renamed Alsterhaus in the 1930s.
Best for Fashion, beauty, and gourmet food across five floors of the 1912 Hermann
Milan / Online
Founded in 1939 by Paolo Boggi with a single menswear shop in Monza; opened its landmark San Babila store in Milan in 1966. Now owned by the Zaccardi brothers, who also run Milan's Brian & Barry department store, with stores in nearly 40 countries.
Best for Travel jackets and smart staples.
Boggi Milano traces back to 1939, when Paolo Boggi opened a single menswear shop in Monza, outside Milan. It wasn't until 1966, after launching its first proper collection, that Boggi opened the San Babila store in central Milan that became its best-known address, and shortly after it made its first move outside Italy with a shop in Geneva. Ownership changed hands twice in the early 2000s. In 2002 the Milanese group Fin.Part bought a 90 percent stake for roughly 8.65 million euros, leaving Paolo Boggi with the remaining 10 percent. In 2003 the brand was bought outright by three brothers, Carlo, Claudio and Roberto Zaccardi, members of the family that already owned Milan's Brian & Barry department stores. Under the Zaccardis, Boggi expanded well beyond its original single-city footprint, growing into a network of stores across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Russia and South America, with especially rapid growth after 2009. The business remains built around men's tailoring and travel-oriented clothing rather than a broader lifestyle range, a focus tracing directly back to the original Monza shop's sartorial specialty. Today the company operates in roughly 40 countries, run by the Zaccardi family alongside their separate department-store business.
Bupyeong-dong, Jung-gu
A historic covered market known for imported goods, food and independent stalls. Established 1910.
Best for Imported goods and food at a historic covered market since 1910
Florence / Online
Italian department-store chain founded in 1916 near Venice by Vittorio Coin, who began as a licensed street vendor of fabrics; its Florence store, after closing on Via dei Calzaiuoli in 2021, reopened near Piazza della Signoria in December 2022.
Best for Italian mid-market one-stop.
Coin was founded in 1916 by Vittorio Coin, who obtained a license to sell fabrics and haberdashery as a street vendor in Pianiga, in the province of Venice. He opened a proper shop selling fabric, yarn and linen in nearby Mirano in 1926, followed two years later by a wholesale warehouse in Dolo — the beginnings of what grew into one of Italy's best-known mid-range department store chains. Coin's Florence branch has had a more recent, turbulent history. It operated for decades on Via dei Calzaiuoli, at number 56, on the site of the historic Duilio 48 department store, which it had taken over in 1990. That location closed for good in 2021 after the store's operators failed to negotiate a rent reduction during the pandemic. Coin returned to Florence in December 2022 with a newly built store near Piazza della Signoria, between Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi in the Loggia del Grano, following a five-month renovation reported to have cost around six million euros.
Eastgate
South African chain founded 1929 by Morris and Eli Ross in Johannesburg, named after London's Swan & Edgar department store; expanded into Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in the late 1940s.
Best for Mid-range fashion, beauty, and shoes for the family
Edgars was founded on 6 September 1929 by brothers Morris and Eli Ross, who opened the first store on Joubert Street in Johannesburg. The name was borrowed from Swan & Edgar, the London department store the brothers used as a model. Sydney Press joined the company in Cape Town in the mid-1930s as a temporary employee and eventually took ownership, driving an expansion that added a second Johannesburg store on Eloff Street in 1937 and branches across South Africa. The chain crossed into what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the late 1940s, with sources placing the first store there between 1946 and 1949 under Press's ownership; it was formally registered as a company in 1948. By 1960 the group operated close to 140 stores regionwide, a figure that more than doubled within five years, and it later absorbed other Southern African retail chains including Sales House and Jet Stores. This Harare branch, in the Eastgate shopping centre, continues the mid-market department-store format the Ross brothers established in Johannesburg nearly a century earlier.
Paris
The Boulevard Haussmann monument — the 1912 stained-glass dome, seven luxury floors and Paris retail’s beating heart. The Haussmann flagship was inaugurated in October 1912 as Bader's 'luxury bazaar'; the dome rises 43 metres over the grand hall.
Best for Iconic Paris department store
Théophile Bader and Alphonse Kahn opened a small Paris novelty shop in 1894; by 1912 it had become the Boulevard Haussmann department store crowned with the neo-Byzantine glass dome that remains one of Paris's great interiors — a forty-three-meter cupola of steel and stained glass above the perfume floor. Galeries Lafayette grew into France's flagship department store: floors of fashion from mass to luxury, a celebrated food hall in Le Gourmet, the men's and home stores adjoining, and the free rooftop terrace with one of the best open views over the Opéra quarter. The Christmas windows and the giant tree beneath the dome are Parisian civic rituals. It is a tourist magnet and knows it, but the dome justifies the crowds. Ride to the top floors for the view, and time a visit for the weekly fashion show if the season offers one.
The rooftop is free and often overlooked in the rush to the dome; go up first, then descend floor by floor with the crowds thinning below you.
Boulevard Haussmann / 9th
The Haussmann mothership — the 1912 neo-byzantine dome, fashion floors, gourmet halls and the rooftop over Opéra.
Best for 1912 neo-Byzantine dome, fashion floors, gourmet halls
Śródmieście
A restored historic market hall housing independent food counters, specialty retailers and cultural events.Established 1909.
Best for Independent food counters and specialty retailers in a restored 1909 market hall.
Osaka, Japan
Osaka department store chain that opened in 1929 above Umeda Station as the world's first railway-terminal department store, under Hankyu Railway founder Ichizo Kobayashi. The Umeda flagship reopened in 2012 after a seven-year rebuild.
Best for Osaka department store
Hankyu's department store business traces to 1925, when Hankyu Market opened in Umeda as a retail division of what was then Hanshin Electric Railway, under company founder Ichizo Kobayashi. In April 1929 this grew into the full Hankyu Department Store, described as the world's first department store built directly into a railway terminal. With two basement floors and eight above ground, it was by far the largest department store in the country when it opened. The company became independent of the railway operator in 1947. The Umeda flagship underwent a seven-year rebuilding project and reopened in 2012 with 15 floors; the company now operates as part of the H2O Retailing group.
Osaka, Japan
Osaka department store at 1-13-13 Umeda, Kita-ku, tracing to a 1933 railway-station shop; known today for its basement Hanshin Food Hall and its Hanshin Tigers baseball merchandise corner.
Best for Osaka premium department store
Hanshin Department Store's Umeda Main Store began in 1933 as Hanshin Mart, an outgrowth of the Hanshin Electric Railway's practice of selling electric goods such as light bulbs from its station offices to serve commuters. In 1939, with the opening of the railway's underground extension, the shop moved into the basement of Shin-Umeda Station as Higashi-Hanshin Mart. In April 1947 the operation split off from Hankyu Railways to become its own department-store company, later merging into what is now Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores Co. The Umeda flagship underwent a major renovation completed in 2018, with a full grand reopening in 2022. Today the store sits at 1-13-13 Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka, and is best known for two things: the basement-level Hanshin Food Market (B1F), and a dedicated shop for Hanshin Tigers merchandise, reflecting the store's long association with the professional baseball team that shares its name and corporate lineage.
Multiple
Dutch variety-store chain (Hollandsche Eenheidsprijzen Maatschappij Amsterdam) founded November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam by Leo Meyer and Arthur Isaac as a fixed-price shop on Kalverstraat; now roughly 750 branches across nine countries.
Best for Dutch department store since 1926.
HEMA — short for Hollandsche Eenheidsprijzen Maatschappij Amsterdam, 'Dutch Fixed-Price Company Amsterdam' — was founded on November 4, 1926, by Leo Meyer and Arthur Isaac, who opened their first shop on Amsterdam's Kalverstraat. Their concept was to sell mixed everyday goods at a small number of fixed prices — originally 10, 25 and 50 cents, later extended to 75 cents and a guilder — bringing a department-store shopping model to ordinary customers rather than the wealthy clientele the era's grand department stores served. The chain expanded steadily before growing rapidly from 1958 onward, when HEMA became the first Dutch company to use franchising to open new locations. It has since become one of the most recognized retail names in the Netherlands, selling own-brand clothing, homeware, stationery, cosmetics and food items, including its stroopwafels. As of 2023, the chain operated close to 750 stores across nine countries, including a mix of company-owned and franchise locations outside the Netherlands, and the company marked its centenary in 2026.
Berlin
KaDeWe brings fashion and home departments together with food shopping at Wittenbergplatz in Berlin's City West. Adolf Jandorf opened the department store in 1907, establishing the business on Tauentzienstraße before its later rebuilding. Today's store continues the department-store format, so a visit can span clothing purchases and food rather than one specialty.
Best for Department-store fashion and food shopping in Berlin
KaDeWe opened at Wittenbergplatz in 1907, following Adolf Jandorf's plan for a department store in western Berlin. Its full name, Kaufhaus des Westens, reflects that location within the developing city of the period. Early departments included fashions from Paris and imported food, placing different kinds of merchandise within one building.
The store's later history includes severe wartime damage and reconstruction, so the premises have changed since that opening. Its history also records services and architectural features that belonged specifically to those earlier years. They provide context for the business rather than a list of facilities promised to a visitor today.
The present store continues to combine fashion with interiors and food, maintaining the broad department-store approach. A shopper can plan around clothing or goods for the home before considering a separate food purchase. Its position on Tauentzienstraße makes the store a defined stop in Berlin's City West shopping area. The varied assortment should be approached by department rather than as a collection of products made in one country.
Hermannplatz, Neukölln, Berlin
Historic Berlin department store on Hermannplatz, opened in 1929 as Europe's largest department store with its own U-Bahn entrance and Art Deco twin towers; badly damaged in WWII, rebuilt, and now trades as a Galeria store following the 2019 Karstadt-Kaufhof merger.
Best for Fashion, home goods, and a rooftop terrace at Hermannplatz
The Hermannplatz department store, on the border of Kreuzberg and Neukolln, opened in 1929 to significant fanfare, designed in an Expressionist style by architect Philipp Schaeffer for the Karstadt group. At the time it was the largest department store in Europe, featuring escalators, lifts, a roof terrace, and its own direct entrance from the Hermannplatz U-Bahn station. The building was badly damaged during the Second World War, and only the southwest wing of the original structure survives. The store has continued trading on the same site, and today operates as a Galeria store following the 2019 merger of Karstadt and Kaufhof into Galeria.
Paramaribo
Trading in Paramaribo since 1936, Kirpalani's is Suriname's sprawling department store, its Domineestraat and Pengelstraat floors stocked with everything from furniture and appliances to fabric, toys and cosmetics. Shoppers can browse in person across four city locations or order online for free delivery.
Best for Department store, furniture, electronics, household
Modena / Via Albinelli
1931 Art Nouveau market — the iron and glass hall, fresh produce, Tortellini Modello, and the Modena market that every food pilgrim visits.
Best for 1931, Art Nouveau, iron and glass, Tortellini Modello.
Nantucket / United States
A family-owned Nantucket clothing store since 1945, Murray's Toggery Shop is the home of the original Nantucket Reds cotton pants and sportswear. It sells men's, ladies' and kids' apparel, accessories and home goods in-store and through its online shop.
Best for Apparel, clothing, Nantucket Reds, menswear
Australia
Australia's largest department-store chain, traced to Sidney Myer's 1900 draper's shop in Bendigo; he bought a Bourke Street drapery business in Melbourne in 1911 and built the eight-story Myer Emporium there in 1914.
Best for Australian department store
Myer's origins trace to 1900, when Sidney Myer and his brother opened a draper's shop in Bendigo, a regional Victorian goldfields town. After that early partnership dissolved, Sidney moved into Melbourne in 1911, buying the existing drapery business of Wright & Neil on Bourke Street. He built the business through retail methods that were unusual for the period - openly displaying merchandise for customers to browse rather than keeping stock behind a counter - and by 1914 had opened the eight-story Myer Emporium, modeled explicitly on San Francisco's department store, the Emporium.
Between 1911 and 1934, Myer acquired or built ten separate buildings along Bourke Street to expand the flagship footprint, consolidating what became the company's signature store. From that Melbourne base the company expanded into every Australian state, making it the only department-store chain with a presence in all of them. The Bourke Street building remains the group's flagship location today, spread across multiple floors with dedicated departments, cafes and an events hall, and is recognized on the Victorian Heritage Database as the former Myer Emporium.
North Conway Nh / United States
Established in 1939 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this five-and-dime on White Mountain Highway keeps its antique wooden counters and glass dividers. Shelves hold penny candy, house-made fudge, classic toys and hard-to-find everyday goods.
Best for Five-and-dime, toys, penny candy, fudge, housewares
Midtown, Manhattan
The luxury department store — the holiday light show, designer floors, and the cornerstone of Fifth Avenue shopping since 1924.
Best for Luxury shopping, the holiday light show, and Fifth Avenue's finest.
Tokyo
Seibu's Ikebukuro flagship traces to a 1940 relaunch by Yasujiro Tsutsumi; the 14-story store is among the world's largest department stores, with a food hall drawing about 70 million visitors a year.
Best for Tokyo fashion department store
The Ikebukuro store's roots go back to 1935, when a small department store called Kikuya opened near Ikebukuro Station. In 1940 Yasujiro Tsutsumi bought it, renamed it Musashino Department Store, and after the war reopened it as Seibu Department Store in a two-story building of about 1,500 square meters. Under Tsutsumi's son Seiji, the store expanded rapidly through the 1950s and 60s into one of Japan's largest department stores.
Today the Ikebukuro flagship, also called Seibu Ikebukuro Honten, is a 14-story building and one of the one of the largest department stores in the world by floor area. Its food hall spans two floors and is described as Tokyo's largest, part of a complex that draws an estimated 70 million visitors a year.
Seibu operates as Sogo & Seibu, a joint department-store group; Ikebukuro remains the group's flagship location in Tokyo's northwest, anchoring the station district alongside its longtime rival Tobu.
London
Harry Gordon Selfridge’s 1909 theatre of retail — the Oxford Street innovator that invented shopping as entertainment. Opening day drew 90,000 visitors; first-week visits topped one million. Westminster Gazette (1909): aim to make shopping 'a pleasure, a pastime, a recreation'.
Best for Iconic department store
Harry Gordon Selfridge, an American retail showman, opened his Oxford Street store in 1909 with a philosophy that changed shopping itself: goods out on display to be touched, staff trained to assist rather than pressure, the store as public theatre — he is credited with the phrase 'the customer is always right' and put Blériot's cross-Channel monoplane on display days after the flight. The columned building runs a full block and remains London's second-largest store. Modern Selfridges earned its own reputation as the most inventive of the world's department stores: the Yellow branding, ambitious themed campaigns filling the famous windows, the Corner Shop's rotating collaborations, and strong beauty, denim, and designer floors. The food hall and rooftop restaurants round it out. Visit for the windows and the energy — no London store works harder to make retail feel like an event.
Check what occupies the Corner Shop before visiting — the rotating concept space is where the store's invention concentrates, and it changes entirely by season.
Orchard Road
Founded in 1932 by C.K. Tang, a Chinese immigrant who began selling linen and lace from tin trunks; its Orchard Road flagship, opened in 1958, drew its pagoda-style roof and colors from Chinese imperial architecture.
Best for Singapore's oldest department store 1932.
Tangs traces back to Tang Choon Keng, a Teochew immigrant who arrived in British Singapore in 1923 after growing up in Shantou, China, the son of a Presbyterian pastor. He started by peddling hand-made Swatow lace, embroidery and linen door to door with a rented rickshaw and a pair of tin trunks, work that earned him the nicknames 'Tin Trunk Man' and 'Curio King.' In 1932, with S$3,000 in capital, he opened a department store on the first floor of a building on River Valley Road, selling craft goods imported from China. In 1958 Tang bought land at the corner of Orchard Road and Scotts Road, building the store that made his name synonymous with the street: a Chinese imperial-style building modeled on the Forbidden City, with green roof tiles for prosperity, yellow facades associated with royalty, red columns for happiness, and octagonal motifs drawn from feng shui. That purchase is credited with helping establish Orchard Road as Singapore's main shopping district. For decades the store stayed closed on Sundays in keeping with the Tang family's Christian faith, a policy that held until after C.K. Tang's death in 2000, when his son Tang Wee Sung took over and began Sunday trading. The flagship underwent a S$45 million renovation starting in 2012, and the company later added a VivoCity location before withdrawing from a Malaysian venture in 2020.
Suva / across Fiji
The Tappoo family built Fiji's other great retail house from a 1941 tailor's bench — homewares, fashion and island living across the archipelago, still family-run.
Best for Fiji’s family-run homeware and gift house
Sweet Auburn
Open in the Sweet Auburn district since 1918, this public market houses independent food stalls, butchers, produce vendors and prepared-food merchants. The historic hall keeps small food businesses trading under one roof.
Best for Historic market food halls, local butchers and prepared foods
Florence / Online
The Italian popular department chain since 1928 — affordable family clothing and homeware on historic high streets.
Best for Everyday household runs.
Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island
Wan Chai Market has traded from The Zenith, across the road from its original 1937 Streamline Moderne building, since relocating there in September 2008. Stalls sell fresh seafood, meat and produce, with a cooked food centre upstairs.
Best for Stalls sell fresh seafood, meat and produce
Wan Chai Market operates today inside The Zenith, a residential complex across Wan Chai Road from the market's original home -- a Streamline Moderne building constructed in 1937 on a site that had served as a bullock-cart depot since 1917. That original building, often mislabeled Bauhaus for its rounded corners and horizontal banding, held Japanese occupying forces' body storage in its basement during the Second World War before being renovated in 1961 to keep pace with newer district markets. By the 2000s it needed replacing again: the government announced in 2007 that it would preserve only the facade and front section of the historic structure while rebuilding the market itself, and the working wet market relocated into The Zenith in September 2008, where it operates now as a covered market with fresh seafood, butchered meat and produce stalls on the lower floors and a cooked food centre above for sit-down meals. The 1937 facade survives next door as a Grade III historic building, kept as a streetscape landmark even though it no longer houses any market activity itself. For a Wan Chai visit, the two sit close enough to see both in one stop: the preserved prewar shell as an architectural note, and the working market it was replaced by as the place to actually shop or eat.
Curated ORBIS register · official links shown where recorded
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