Inside abandoned ‘Haven of Hedonism' hotel left to rot once owned by US porn baron & frequented by Saddam Hussein

The Sun

02-05-2025

THE Haludovo Hotel is one of many abandoned buildings along the Croatia's glittering Adriatic coast - but this one has a particularly scandalous past.
Amongst all the casinos and party hotels, the Haludovo was notorious for being the haven of hedonism.
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The opulent estate had 17 tennis courts, a mini football pitch and mini-golf, as well as waterski, paragliding and diving centres.
One of America's most notorious porn barons, Bob Guccione, dreamt up and funded the hotel throughout its 1970s heyday - when it was known as the palace of "Peace and Porn".
He brought in corset-clad hostesses, which he called "Penthouse Pets", who would walk the halls and serve guests champagne.
Many rich and famous names indulged in the glamour, even including Sadam Hussein - Iraq's violent dictator of 24 years.
Hussein enjoyed gold-standard service when he came walked through the doors of the Haludovo, and would always stay in the master suite.
The once-plush pad is now a graffiti-coated ruin, with crumbling walls and smashed windows.
Many curious tourists still visit the site on the island of Krk to photograph the deteriorating shell and wonder at the things that went on between the walls.
Guccione founded the Penthouse Magazine, which was the first American publication to feature full-frontal nudity.
He dreamed of building a lavish resort in Malinska, Krk, filled with luxury hotels and a grand casino, to attract a wealthy American pleasure-seekers.
He opened it up in 1972 in socialist Yugoslavia - which was largely ignored by the States.
This was a savvy business move, because casinos were untaxed.
Locals were banned from gambling in them, so they existed only to serve foreign tourists.
Guccione hoped that wealthy American tourists would flock to Krk to gamble away their money at his hotel.
He also planned to hire only locals so that he could avoid American employment regulations.
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In a 1972 interview with Radio Free Europe, Guccione vowed his resort would be the "real formula in the struggle against the cold war".
He claimed it would help relations to have Americans visiting the socialist country and enjoying themselves.
The porn king invested a whopping $45million, £296m in today's currency, into the development of the property and the casino.
One of Croatia 's most celebrated architects, Boris Magaš, was drafted in to design the complex.
The building's style was strikingly modern, and is now considered a classic example of brutalism.
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It took four years to build, and The Haludovo Palace Hotel and Penthouse Adriatic Club Casino opened in 1972 to great fanfare.
A 1972 ad for Haludovo in Penthouse magazine described the resort as a "mile-long Xanadu of glittering buildings [that] will become for international cognoscenti a premier playground for summer and winter seasons alike".
Guests gobbled 100kg of lobster, 5kg of caviar and hundreds of bottles of champagne each day of its lively first year.
The resort bloomed into a hub for global dictators and politicians, American weekend gamblers, the Yugoslav music scene, and ordinary citizens.
Who was Bob Guccione?
BOB Guccione was one of America's most famous porn publishers.
He founded Penthouse magazine, which was the first publication in the US to feature photographs of full-frontal nudity.
Guccione considered himself an artist and took many of the photos for Penthouse himself.
The trademark of his brand of soft porn was to picture the naked model looking away from the camera - which Guccione described as the "philosophy of voyeurism".
Founded in Britain in 1965, Penthouse made headlines across the Atlantic two decades later when it published unauthorised nude photos of Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America.
The controversy forced her to give up her crown, but the issue sold nearly six million copies and helped make Guccione one of America's wealthiest men.
Guccione went on to squander a $400m fortune on unwise investments in the gambling and film industries.
He died in 2010 from cancer aged 79.