The Vidmar Villa was purchased as residency for the German ambassador, in a deal worth EUR 2.8m. Ambassador Anna Elisabeth Prinz has lived there as a tenant since 2013, Delo reported on Thursday.

The City of Ljubljana has the pre-emptive right to buy the building, which is protected as a national cultural monument, but decided against it due to lack of funds.

The city does however still own a tiny bit of the property: a part of the monument to the founding congress of the Liberation Front on the border of the property, which was built by famed architect Jože Plečnik.

While it may seem ironic that a building which symbolises the fight against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is now in the hands of the German state, nobody seems to have a problem with that.

Tit Turnšek, the head of the influential WWII Veterans' Association, told the paper that his organisation had been cooperating well with the German embassy.

The embassy said it was aware of the historical significance of the building. Ambassador Prinz "thinks it is important to preserve the memory of resistance" and lays flowers to the monument on the Day of Resistance, the embassy told Delo.

The Vidmar Vila, named after the respected Ljubljana family, was built in the 1930s. Despite its historical significance, it fell into disrepair in the last decades of the 20th century and was extensively renovated in the early 2000s.

It is located in Rožna dolina, a leafy upscale part of Ljubljana that is home to many historical villas and townhouses, down the street from another prominent residence, that of the US ambassador.