The Oak of Allouville-Bellefosse (Chêne Chapelle)

Lightning hollowed this oak sometime in the 1600s, and two priests turned the hollow into two chapels rather than let the tree rot from the inside. Abbé du Détroit and Father du Cerceau built Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix low in the trunk and the Chambre de l'Ermite above it starting in 1696, and both are still there, reached by a spiral staircase wrapped around the outside of the trunk. Local tradition puts its planting under Charlemagne, around 800, which would make it some 1,200 years old; a more sober scientific reading puts it closer to 800. Neither figure comes with a ring count attached, so the honest answer is somewhere between the two, older than the buildings around it either way. Its girth runs to 15 metres at a metre off the ground, under 18 metres of crown that still leafs out and drops acorns every year. It survived a closer call than lightning. During the Revolution, a local resident is said to have renamed it the Temple of Reason rather than let it be felled as a symbol of the old order, and it worked. France classified it a monument historique in 1932. A small visitor centre nearby, the Espace découverte du Chêne, can arrange a look inside; the tree itself stands free and open on the village street, next to the church it long ago outgrew.