# Holidays at a one-time Communist luxury beach haven? Yugoslav resort built for Tito to rise from ruins

Revolutionary leader’s derelict Adriatic getaway is on verge of a new life after starring in Kate Winslet film and hit Mr Beast YouTube video

In the 1960s, the country’s Communist leader, Josip “Tito” Broz, ordered the building of a vast holiday complex exclusively reserved for members of the military on this hilly stretch of the Dalmatian coast. For the top brass there were individual villas; for the lower ranks, a choice of six hotels, while the foot soldiers were relegated to a camping site surrounded by palm trees and lush greenery.

Tito found Kupari so agreeable that he built his-and-hers holiday villas nearby overlooking the Adriatic Sea. where he and his wife, Jovanka, entertained VIP guests including Hollywood stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

In the 1990s, when , more than a decade after Tito’s death and during the battle for Croatian independence, the site was shelled. Today, the hotels, once the height of postwar luxury, are concrete skeletons, strewn with detritus and covered with graffiti.

Now, after three decades of neglect, locals are hoping the site will finally be returned to its former glory as part of a €150m five-star development.

“It has been an eyesore for 30 years, so everyone is pleased it will be developed and it will offer local employment,” Marko Dabrović, the architect overseeing the plans, told the _Observer_ during an exclusive visit to the fenced-off site. “But after 10 years of on, off, stop, start, will it, won’t it happen, they are waiting to see if it really does.”



Kupari in its sunnier 1960s heyday.

Photo: Damir Šagolj/The Observer

In recent years, Kupari’s ruins have appealed to off-the-beaten-track tourists who have picked over its deserted rooms or camped in dusty corridors and hallways while composing blogs about the “bay of abandoned hotels”.



Kupari today … dilapidated and in need of a serious makeover.

Photo: Damir Šagolj/The Observer

In 2022, the biopic _Lee_, in which Kate Winslet played the second world war photographer Lee Miller, was partly shot at Kupari, made to look like 1945 Normandy. And in March last year, popular YouTuber Mr Beast released a video filmed here called _I_ _Survived 7_ _Days_ _in_ _an_ _Abandoned_ _City_ which was viewed by more than 2 million people in the first half hour.

On a crisp February morning, the Jugo wind that gave Yugoslavia its name gusted through the windows of the Pelegrin Hotel, a trapezoid-shaped building designed by Sarajevan architect David Finci and lauded as a masterpiece when it opened in 1963. Today, it is a concrete carcass: the roof open to the rain, the marble steps smashed or stolen, the furniture gone and the Olympic-size swimming pool full of rubbish.

The sea-facing walls are covered in graffiti and pockmarked with shrapnel from artillery attacks by the Yugoslav navy in the 1991-92 siege of Dubrovnik. Campaigners sought – unsuccessfully – to have it listed as a heritage building but Dabrović believes it is beyond repair.

“It was architecturally interesting but even if we could rebuild it – and we cannot – it would not meet modern safety standards,” Dabrović said.

Having grown up in Dubrovnik, he remembers the site in its heyday: “I have fond memories of playing water polo at the Kupari pool when I was 13 or 14. I would come here on a daily basis. There was a lot of military around back then. It was spooky but was still a working holiday resort.”



The Grand Hotel built in 1923.

Photo: Damir Šagolj/The Observer

In 1971, Tito entertained Burton and Taylor at Kupari, to discuss how the actor would be playing him in the second world war film _The Battle of Sutjeska_. , Burton wrote: “When he  sits down behind a table he seems most formidable. I’m slightly put out by the nervousness with which the servants serve us all.”

He added: “Both Tito and Madame Broz tell long stories which they don’t allow the interpreters to interrupt, result being that by the time the latter have finished one couldn’t care less what the story is about … It is as well that I’m not drinking or I might be asking some very awkward questions.”



Architect Marko Dabrović at the Grand Hotel.

Photo: Damir Šagolj/The Observer

“The challenge has been to integrate the new buildings into the landscape. We are building only where there are existing buildings and using local materials,” Dabrović said.

In Kupari town, locals are impatient for construction to start. Standing on the roof of the Pelegrin, Dabrović juggled calls from officials threatening to delay building permits, but remained optimistic that the bulldozers parked on the site would soon be at work.

“As architects, it has been very frustrating. Nobody expects to be working on a project for 10 years without a single thing being constructed,” he said.

“Now everyone is just waiting for it to finally happen.”
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