Five hotels, built in the 60’s and once a holiday home for Yugoslavia’s military elite, sit crumbling into the crystal clear waters of the Adriatic Sea. They’ve now been abandoned for decades.
We visited this place in the summer of 2022, when temperature rised to 38 degrees, so that’s why my wife stayed at the beach and I explored the hotels alone.
Hotel Kupari was worth visiting for its blackened walls and ceilings, but especially for it’s large swimming pool.
The once-exclusive holiday resorts of Kupari saw thousands of Yugoslav officers and their families in it’s heyday. During the Croatian War of Independence, the Yugoslav Army destroyed the former beach paradises. After looting each of the five hotels, they systematically burned the hotels down, floor by floor.
The hotels—Grand, Kupari, Goričina, Goričine II, and Pelegrin—had enough room for 1,600 guests at a time. A nearby campsite could hold over 4,000 more. Even Tito had a holiday home at Kupari. The resort wasn’t built exclusively for the military elite, but as it’s popularity grew, booking became increasingly difficult unless one had connections.
Today, the beaches that stretch out before the ruins remain popular, despite that the effects of the Yugoslavian
war are nowhere more visible than here.