opened a sanatorium. He was also the main doctor of the Austrian Railways, and a member of the Austrian Doctors' Association. In 1902, the Parenzana railway system was introduced which increased the popularity of the region, but was later dissolved because of decreased spa interests. In 1909, the era of construction of most private villas ended with opening of a much bigger building for accommodation standards at the time; the Palace Cur Hotel, later known as the Palace Hotel. At the initial opening ceremony, in 1910, the Palace Hotel was named "the most beautiful hotel on the Adriatic coast". The hotel was equipped with the most modern therapeutic accessories, and a casino was built for important wealthy guests. The thriving tourist community was halted by World War I, and a few years after the war (in which they came under Italian rule) in 1928 they included a new electric therapy among their treatment programmes. In the interwar period the settlement was slowly regaining its former glory when World War II severely crippled it again. The crisis lasted until 1968 when renovations and new constructions under the new entity of Yugoslavia began to take place along the whole region. In this time they began to build the settlement's infrastructure with the casino doing the bulk of the investments in reconstructing the sports airfield in nearby Sečovlje and building the multi-purpose auditorium in 1972. In 1976, two hotel complexes were constructed in Bernardin; in the following year another was added in the same area. In the same year they began transforming the Lucija saltworks into a marina for smaller vessels. Since the secession of Slovenia from Yugoslavia, Portorož has become one of the most important tourist sites in the country. Gambling The first casino to be opened was in Villa San Lorenzo, on 27 July 1913, and was run by the Casino des Etrangers society. It only lasted a few months before being shut down. The industry faded away in the northern Adriatic region, until 1963, when Zavod za pospeševanje turizma, whose president was Anton Nino Spinelli, proposed a reopening of the casino. The next year the first casino in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, and the second within Yugoslavia other than the one in Opatija, Croatia. In 1972, the company moved into the newly built and much larger Remisens Premium Hotel Metropol, where they employed around 450 people. Having a large