Antunovac, Velika

Antunovac is a small village in the Municipality of Velika, set in the lowlands of the Požega Valley below the southern slopes of Papuk. A 2025 municipal document records 103 residents, giving it a much quieter, more thinly built character than nearby Trnovac or the municipal centre of Velika. The village is associated with the Stražemanka stream, part of the Potoci oko Papuka ecological network and a water system linking Antunovac with Biškupci and the foothills of Papuk. Velika’s local-road maps group Antunovac with Trnovac, an apt reflection of its position among the short rural roads crossing the cultivated Požega landscape. Antunovac is neither an entrance to Papuk Nature Park nor a settlement with developed visitor facilities; its identity lies in the transition from open farmland to the streams and rising ground beneath the mountain. A visit works best as a brief stop combined with Trnovac, Biškupci or Velika, where the area’s main services and routes into the nature park are concentrated.

Antunovac is one of 24 settlements in the Municipality of Velika, yet its setting in the flat Požega countryside distinguishes it from the municipality’s hill villages farther north. The 2021 census counted 103 residents, compared with 158 cited in a municipal plan for 2018–2023, and that decline is reflected in the village’s sparse scale. The Stražemanka stream links its landscape with Biškupci and the Potoci oko Papuka ecological network, although Antunovac itself does not lie inside Papuk Nature Park. Houses following the village road, cultivated plots and views towards the Papuk foothills define the place more clearly than any historic centre or visitor complex.