We came across a very interesting sight on Krk Island in Northern Croatia; The grand Haludovo Palace Hotel, which is also known as the Penthouse Adriatic Club Casino. Sounds pretty swanky huh? But it hasn’t had a paying customer in over a decade.

The owner was the founder of Penthouse Magazine, Bob Guccione, and his hotel was one of the most ambitious of its kind for the 20th century. It opened its swanky doors in 1972, aiming at foreign tourists and employing ‘Pets’ from America, who supposedly dressed as sexy French maids. Within one year the hotel became bankrupt, but managed to resist closure for two decades until the war, when tourist numbers plummeted. The hotel ended up being used to house refugees. After the war they were inevitably asked to leave, but clearly didn’t want to, so ended up stealing valuables from the hotel in rebellion. It went downhill from then and is now a a depressing death trap.

We wondered down a road that was closed off with a barrier and arrived in the totally deserted car park. The hotel was rather ugly; It was box shaped with white shutters all over it, some had been broken and it was in a bad state. We could see balcony doors and windows half smashed with a few pointy shards of glass remaining.

The ground floor was open to the elements; I guess it used to be made of glass and that all sat on the floor in piles now. A fence made a poor attempt at keeping people out, so we stepped over huge slabs of glass and inside the Palace. Boy was it creepy inside, we felt like we were intruding and shouldn’t be there, maybe we shouldn’t of.

The ceiling had fallen through in places, and the ground was covered in rubble. I could almost envision walking in on a hot day, heading to the reception on the right (which still had a vintage till and key boxes) and then relaxing in one of the many circular, cushioned booths that surrounded the matching bar in the centre of the room.

Hallways led off for what looked like eternity, there was no way we were walking down one of them, the whole place gave us the shudders. We wanted to see the bedrooms, but the concrete steps didn’t look welcoming with chunks missing out of their edges. Needless to say, the elevators didn’t look like a good alternative so we warily headed up the steps. The landing was carpeted, and covered in stains, a lot looked questionable….’oh god, I think that’s diarrhoea!!’. We nervously stepped into the closest room, it was tiny, with an en-suite that came with a free turd, ‘Welcome to the Haludovo Palace Hotel – watch your step!!’.

It felt like a horror movie walking around, the walls were covered in graffiti, one of which said ‘RUN! AND DONT LOOK BACK!’. What if a hobo lived there? What if the rooms were used as a crack den? I kept thinking I’d walk past one of the rooms and see a figure dash past.

Upstairs was too scary, especially as we’d seen the ceiling had collapsed below, therefore the ground clearly wasn’t as sturdy as when the ‘Pet’s’ were bouncing on beds. So we quickly headed down and wondered around the once beautiful and tended walkways that would of had hanging gardens and sculptures. There were two tennis courts and an area for bowls.

The trails even headed down to the crystal clear Adriatic where their was an area for super yachts to moor up. Amazingly, it was just a stumble from the hotel yet families were walking along the seafront enjoying the sunshine and blissfully unaware of the hell hole that lay behind the bushes.

We headed back to the Palace and found a dark fenced off area which housed the vintage bowling alley, along with a half burnt and half rotten sports bar. The fence had a corner peeled back so we crawled under. The wall was lined with poo bombs. It really was a disgusting place actually; a retro leopard print swimsuit hung on the fence with a condom wrapper below, how very romantic. Everything had been trashed, but you could clearly see the lanes and the thin wooden runways where the balls were rolled back up.

It took a while but we found the two swimming pools. The flooring around the pools was very retro with yellow flowered tiles. A beach bar had managed to stay in fairly good nick with bar stools and its counters and shelfs. There were changing rooms, saunas, and even a massage room. The restaurant was just an empty space, and a large kitchen led off from it with only the extractor fans, a couple of paper menus and thick grease remaining. We quickly left that room when we saw a handprint had smeared shit down the wall. The poo wasn’t the scary part, the size of the hand was! It was HUGE, and we didn’t want to meet the beast that marked that wall.

It was a bloody fun experience though. We thought we’d only spend 5 minutes having a quick peek but it ended up being over an hour walking in Bob’s footsteps.

I read a couple of articles after visiting and found out that Saddam Hussein stayed at the Palace in the master suite. We were gutted afterwards that we hadn’t thought about their being suites on the top floor. But with how creepy it was, we probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to go up two or three more floors.

Not the average tourist sight in Croatia but a very interesting one!