Letter from Lake Bled: A quarter of a century has passed since the mansion's creator left for good, but the view from its balcony has barely changed, writes Daniel McLaughlin
A pale church on a wooded island still rises above Lake Bled, snowcapped mountains still cradle its clear waters, and drinks are still served on the veranda outside the villa.
No longer for Josip Broz, however, the man better known as Marshal Tito, but for tourists able to pay for a taste of the high life enjoyed by Yugoslavia's former ruler.
Tito, who led a partisan struggle against the Nazis and their allies in the second World War, came down from the mountains to take power in 1945, and spent the next 35 years carving a unique niche in the communist world and indulging a legendary taste for luxury.
Vila Bled, tucked away in an Alpine corner of Slovenia close to the Austrian border, was just one of dozens of residences in former Yugoslavia that Tito graced according to the vagaries of the seasons and his mood.
Built according to Tito's instructions in 1947, Vila Bled is still preserved in the monumental style demanded by the dictator.
It looms up at the end of a long driveway, imposing but well-proportioned, and surrounded by gardens and trees that used to protect it from prying eyes.
Inside, its blend of austerity and opulence matches that of Tito himself.
The walls are of the same Croatian marble that clad Washington's White House, and it glimmers here with the cold lustre of dozens of reflected chandeliers. Throughout the public rooms, the lines are sharp and functional, the furniture simple but comfortable. Bronze fittings add brightness but little warmth. While demanding real luxury, Tito seems to have seen decadence as the insidious enemy, ready to pounce behind each shimmering pillar.
Upstairs are 10 double rooms and 20 suites, including Tito's own presidential quarters. A bronze bust of the craggy marshal now watches pampered guests check their e-mails in his former office, while his personal cinema is a conference room.
Around its walls, murals play out snowy, bloody scenes from Tito's guerrilla war of the 1940s. In the darkness, watching the latest films brought to him from around the world, he kept his hard past close as a constant reminder of other times.
Tito loved whiskey and Cuban cigars and, as a communist ruler in Europe who openly rejected Moscow's edicts, he was feted by leaders from East and West alike.
Haile Selassie, Nikita Khrushchev, King Hussein of Jordan, Pandit Nehru, Indira Ghandi and Emperor Akihito of Japan were all guests at Vila Bled. One dignitary remembered with little warmth is Kim Il-Sung of North Korea, who took much of the mansion's inventory back to Pyongyang with him.
From Lake Bled, down the island-studded Adriatic coast and inland to the wild mountain terrain of Bosnia, Tito enjoyed dozens of luxury hideaways.
He made the islands of Brijoni his own holiday archipelago, and ferried the likes of Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Fidel Castro, and Queen Elizabeth II around his safari park in a 1953 Cadillac convertible. He filled the park with antelope and zebra, and had fiercer beasts stuffed and put on show around his estate.
Saddam Hussein visited Tito in 1976, and was particularly taken by another piece of his property empire - a luxurious bunker beneath a Bosnian mountain which was built to house some 500 people and survive a nuclear attack.
In the 1980s, Tito's engineers went to Baghdad to create a smaller version for the Iraqi leader, with a 16ft concrete roof capable of withstanding a direct hit from 2,000 kilogrammes of TNT or a nuclear bomb blast two kilometres away.
Many of Tito's former guests have seen their star fall in dramatic fashion, but he died with his dream of a united Yugoslavia intact. Only when his iron grip on the country was gone did politicians use latent nationalism to pursue personal power, and ultimately unleashed a blood bath in the region.
In Slovenia, where Tito's mother was born, young people now wear his face on T-shirts as if he were a Balkan Che Guevara; older people still thank him for his resistance in the second World War and the rapid improvement in living standards thereafter; others believe that his authoritarianism created a power-vacuum that allowed the likes of Slobodan Milosevic to flourish after his death.
After his death, Tito's luxuries were declared state property, leaving his wife and children to live modestly. Last year, however, Belgrade's attempt to auction off his limousines - including bulletproof Rolls-Royces and Mercedes - was stymied by a public outcry.
His private jet, a Boeing 727, was less fortunate. A Yugoslav airline ripped out its plush interior, and used it for charter flights. It was last heard of joining the fleet of a budget airline in Indonesia.