The Oak of Via di Valecchie

Italy added this oak to its national register of monumental trees on 24 July 2026, and it went straight in as the tallest tree Umbria has on that list. Thirty metres tall, 5.2 metres round. For a downy oak that is unusual: the species is the drought-tolerant hillside oak of central Italy and it normally stops well short of thirty, so this one has spent its life on deep soil with water and nothing crowding it for light. The address explains part of that. Valecchie is a hamlet below Assisi's walls, on the plain rather than the hill, at 273 metres against the old town's 420, where the ground is farmland instead of limestone. Every visitor to Assisi climbs; the tallest monumental tree in the region has been standing down the hill from them the whole time. It is on or beside Via di Valecchie, a public road, though whether you get to the trunk or only to the verge is not something we can promise yet. The freshness of the listing is itself worth something. A ministerial decree in the tenth national update named it this July, which means surveyors measured this tree standing and healthy weeks ago rather than decades ago. Most register entries anywhere cannot say that. No age is recorded. Italy's national list has never carried an age field and no local source fills the gap. If somebody has dated this oak, tell us.