MALA UČKA

Village settlement Mala Učka consists of two hamlets: Brumnjaci and Brubnjaci or Gornje Selo and Donje Selo (Upper and Lower Village) (accoridng to popular tradition from Istrian side, they are called : Pilati and Dolenji) between which there is a brook (Potok). The settlement was founded on the old road which connected Istria with Croatian Littoral. It consisted of a line of outhouses driven by water - corn mills and plants for washing and processing of linen. Since the village belonged to two districts from different sides of Učka, part of inhabitants were burried on the cemetery in Mošćenice, and the other part in Vranje.

Mala Učka is a registered rural unit from 1976. The structure of the settlement was made by stone outhouses with gable roofs, vegetable covering, characteristically elevated one or both of lintels, and living quarters having a quadrangular ground plan, often with a charcateristic semicircular or square annexe for the hearth, the so called «tornica». By the border of the village there is a sacral object erected by the beginning of the 20th c. and a small votive prayer spot which is rather badly preserved.

Although it is placed on a higher spot than the neighbouring village Vela Učka, Mala Učka was called that because it held less houses than in the other village. Once there existed 22 living houses and 45 outhouses, but they were burned during the war in 1944, what testifies the memorial slab erected in the village.

The surroundings of the settlement are interpreted with agricultural and cattle-breeding features: fields and hay fields encircled in dry walls. The colourfulness of the flora and the landscape beauty of the environment with rural qualities of the settlement enclosed in rocks and pasture lands represent an exquisite natural value.

The powerful water springs above the village, which show on the border of limestone and waterresistant stone, are enclosed in order to be transported through pipes to touristic settlements of Liburnian coast. Mala Učka got water from those springs in 1912, in the same year as Opatija. However, it got electrical power in as late as 1956.

Mala Učka once had 130 inhabitants, a delicious potato was growing on the fields, and sheep grazed on the nighbouring pastures. Today Mala Učka is a deserted mauntain village. The inhabitants have moved to Lovran, Opatija, or other towns by the sea on the eastern slopes of Učka. Still, in the last several years there have been some movements showing the revitalization of Mala Učka, today predominantly in the function of temporary and weekend staying, what can be seen from several reconstructed houses.

The Town Of Opatija Cultural-Historical Heritage Veprinac Opatija Volosko Ičići

© Ineco, 1995./2005.