During the difficult days of the 1990s occasional graffiti appeared on Belgrade walls with the telling legend 'the locksmith was better' - a reference to Josip Tito's early employment before he became presidentfor- life of Yugoslavia. Tito ruled for thirty five years until his death in 1980 but since the breakup of the federation his memory has been laced with ambiguity in the Serbian capital. Unlike some eastern European countries where purpose built museums portray the communist period as either horror show or tongue in cheek deconstruction, Serbia is still uncertain as to how best commemorate its recent past. Reminders of the ill-fated Milosevic period are still evident in places - a few bomb-shattered government buildings, occasional nationalist graffiti, even a white-elephant underground station - but the legacy of Yugoslavia's period of non-aligned socialism with Tito as helmsman is altogether more elusive.

I have taken the number 41 trolleybus from Studentski trg in the Old Town to the city's leafy southern reaches. Dedinje is a middle-class suburb that contains an improbable mixture of parks, private mansions, embassies and the city's two premier football stadia. I get off at Bulevar Mira and follow a paved footpath uphill through trees, past an abandoned bandstand sitting in the centre of a shallow, dried-up pond and an area filled with abstract socialist statuary. A courtyard of concrete paving slabs leads to the building I am seeking. This unremarkable glass and concrete edifice, which might easily be the administrative centre of an educational institute or the headquarters of a medium-sized stationary firm, is identified on my city map as the Museum of the 25th of May.