I had only just arrived in Dubrovnik the night before, but jet lag had me out of bed before sunrise.
By ten in the morning, I had already walked the city walls, photographed the glimmering limestone streets of the Old Town, and drained the adrenaline of arrival into a kind of restless energy. The day was blazing hot, so I stopped for a peach iced tea (my perennial favourite) before heading south along the coast toward a place I had been curious about for while now: the abandoned Hotel Belvedere.
The walk was quiet, almost too quiet for such a popular city. A main road soon gave way to a tree-lined path where elegant villas looked out to the Adriatic. Flowering trees arched overhead, and for long stretches I was the only person in sight. It felt strange — Dubrovnik was already thrumming with tourists, but here, a kilometre away, the city hushed.
Eventually, the path ended near a church under construction, and the last few hundred meters wound between grand seaside homes. Then, quite suddenly, I stumbled into another world. A vast, abandoned swimming pool opened up before me, the blue long gone, concrete walls plastered with graffiti. A skeletal metal frame jutted above the empty pool like the ribcage of some long-dead creature.
That was when the cats appeared. One, then two, then a dozen. More cats than people I had seen all morning. They padded over walls, lounged in sunbeams, and watched me from broken staircases. This was their kingdom now.
Hotel Belvedere Dubrovnik
The Hotel Belvedere Dubrovnik opened in 1985, a five-star marvel with sweeping terraces, a private beach, and nearly 200 rooms. It was built to be one of the Adriatic’s crown jewels. But its glamour was short-lived. When the Croatian War of Independence broke out in 1991, the Yugoslav People’s Army shelled Dubrovnik from the sea. The Belvedere became both a strategic position and a target, badly damaged in the fighting. It never reopened.
Now, nearly thirty years later, the hotel is frozen in its abandonment. Shattered windows gape like wounds. Concrete hallways, once polished for luxury guests, crumble into the overgrowth.
I climbed up the broken staircases behind the pool, brushing past vines and loose stone. Every few steps I hesitated, half-expecting to stumble across someone who had made the ruins their home. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be there. I peered into darkened doorframes, broken tiles crunching beneath my shoes, but never stepped fully inside. The emptiness was heavy, charged — it was almost like the building remembered.
At the top of the hill, I reached the front entrance. It must have once been magnificent, but now the letters spelling Hotel Belvedere hung like a relic. The main hall was sealed off, a boat of all things parked in the driveway as if the place had been reduced to someone’s private garage.
The Arena Beneath
I made my way back down toward the pool, hunting for something else the Hotel Belvedere Dubrovnik is famous for: an amphitheatre carved into the cliffside just below. It’s a hauntingly beautiful space, once used for concerts, later immortalized in Game of Thrones. I couldn’t resist acting out the infamous scene where Pedro Pascal’s character meets his brutal end. Alone, ridiculous, and a little sweaty, I laughed to myself until I noticed an older couple emerging from a staircase that led up from the beach. They smiled politely; perhaps they had caught my performance.
War and Memory
Standing there, in a shell of luxury undone by war, I thought of how fragile places can be. The Belvedere isn’t just a ruin; it’s a reminder of the siege that scarred Dubrovnik in the early 1990s, when the city’s beauty was nearly lost to destruction. Today, tourists pour in by the thousands, the Old Town polished to perfection, cruise ships anchoring in the bay. But the Belvedere lingers as a counterpoint — a ghost on the edge of paradise, whispering that the past is never so far behind.
Leaving the Cats Behind
As I left, the cats trailed me down the stairs, pausing in the shadows, as if seeing me off their grounds. I stopped for another peach iced tea on my way back to my Airbnb, the sun still blazing overhead.
I’m not usually one for urban exploration. Abandoned places unsettle me — the silence, the sense of trespass, the what-ifs of who or what might be hiding inside. But the Belvedere was different. It felt like stepping into Dubrovnik’s hidden memory, a reminder that travel isn’t just about what’s polished and presented, but also what’s broken and left behind.
Maybe that’s the lesson: beauty isn’t always in restoration. Sometimes, it’s in the ghosts that refuse to vanish.