BULLET-riddled ruins of a luxury hotel complex provided an eerie backdrop to dramatic film scenes set in World War Two.
Transformed into model-turned-war journalist Lee Miller, Kate Winslet shot part of new biopic Lee at the sinister-looking resort in Croatia.
The ruins were transformed into a scene reminiscent of World War TwoCredit: Splash
Miller documented the atrocities of World War Two and was famously photographed posing in Adolf Hitler’s bath.
In need of a realistic setting for war scenes, director Elen Kuras turned to the ghostly complex in Kupari village – just a stone’s throw from Dubrovnik’s busy beaches.
Action shots show Winslet dressed in khakis surrounded by rubble and smoke at the site.
Once bustling with tourists, the crumbling ruins are scarred by Croatia’s own war history.
With the Grand Hotel as its crowning jewel, the site features several other hotels – Pelegrin, Goricine I, Goricine II, Kupari and Galeb – able to accommodate thousands of guests.
The Grand Hotel flung its doors open in 1919 after a forward-thinking Czech investor realised the area’s tourism potential.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, several other hotels popped around it – largely bankrolled by the military.
It then became a huge draw for the Yugoslav military elite and their families – and Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito even had his private villa there.
Spots at the hotel became harder and harder for normal holidaymakers to snap up – with rooms often prioritised for those with military connections.
But when the Balkans conflict kicked off in the 1990s, the Yugoslav People’s Army dramatically bombed their own precious holiday project in a bid to push out the Croatian soldiers.
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They then badly vandalised the once-plush hotels, igniting phosphorous bombs and looting the rooms.
Following the destruction, Croatia’s army used the complex as a base before it was abandoned for good as the new millennium dawned.
The few remaining relics were then stripped out by locals, and the site has stood empty ever since and never returned to its former glory.
Once a revolving door for high-ranking officers, its only visitors now are curious explorers.
But there remains hope for the stagnating site as it sits on prime tourism turf, with many investors and developers understood to be eager to snap up the plot.
There are understood to be plans to renovate the site, now nicknamed the “bay of abandoned hotels”.
The Grand Hotel would be kept as the centrepiece, but the other hotels would be demolished to make way for new constructions.