After World War II and the liberation of Belgrade, Tito moved to the Serbian capital and lived in a villa at 15 Uzicka Street in the upmarket Dedinje district of the city.

During WWII, the villa, which was built in 1934, had been used by German commanders until it was occupied by the Yugoslav Partisans. The commander of the Partisan forces, Peko Dapcevic, led the final operation for the liberation of Belgrade from the villa. From 1946 until 1979, it became Tito’s home.

Tito also lived at some point after the war in the Beli Dvor (White Palace), the property of the former royal family of Yugoslavia, which was completed in 1937. When he came to Belgrade, he brought his long-standing personal assistant and allegedly greatest love, Davorjanka Paunovic. She died in 1946 and was buried within the palace complex.

The complex is now the property of the state, but the Karadjordjevic family, Serbia’s former royal dynasty, is allowed to use it. It is open to visitors.

In 1979, another villa was built nearby, at 11 Uzicka Street, later called Villa Mir (Peace), but Tito never moved in.

After his death, the two villas on Uzicka Street, a winter garden (later called the House of Flowers, where Tito and his wife are buried), two museums and a couple of other buildings became the Josip Broz Tito Memorial Centre. The House of Flowers and the Tito Memorial Centre are now part of the Museum of Yugoslavia, which remains a popular site for tourists.

After the election in 1997, when Slobodan Milosevic became president of Yugoslavia, he and his family moved into the villa at 15 Uzicka Street. They lived there until April 1999, when the building was hit during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and seriously damaged.

The Milosevic family then moved into the other villa at 11 Uzicka Street, which at that time contained a lot of Tito’s property. After he was deposed, Milosevic was arrested there in 2001 and subsequently sent to The Hague to stand trial for wartime crimes.

Today, the villa at 15 Uzicka Street is designated for the use of state representatives, while 11 Uzicka Street is classified as a ‘residency’, and can be used for receptions by the president or prime minister or to host high-level foreign guests.

After Tito died, his widow Jovanka was transferred to another villa on Peace Boulevard (now Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic Boulevard) in Dedinje, where she lived until her death in 2013. She rarely left the house, which was in very poor condition.

The house has the same status as the villa at 15 Uzicka Street, but according to media reports, the state can’t afford to renovate it.

Another complex in Karadjordjevo, a village near Backa Palanka in northern Serbia, was used by the Yugoslav government and then in 1973 was given to the Yugoslav People’s Army, but was considered to be Tito’s because he spent a lot of time there – mostly hunting, but also receiving high-profile foreign guests.

Tito’s private property was initially declared to be the property of the state after he died, but that ruling was declared unconstitutional in 2000. The court case over the rights to his legacy is still ongoing.

In 2013, Serbia’s then president Tomislav Nikolic set up a commission to open a safe belonging to Tito at the National Bank of Serbia.

The safe was opened, but no information was made public about what was found inside, although media speculated that it was full of gold and precious jewels.

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