The Olive Tree of Pisistratus

A tree in a pocket park behind a suburban church carries a claim that would make it older than the Parthenon: officially attested by the Hellenic Archaeological Society in 1919 at more than 2,500 years, and popularly billed since as the oldest living olive tree on Earth. Modern olive dating complicates that considerably. Olive trunks rot hollow from the inside as they age, taking the innermost, oldest rings with them, and radiocarbon studies of other headline-grabbing old Mediterranean olives have repeatedly found real ages closer to three or four hundred years once properly tested. No such study has been published for this specimen, so its 1919 figure rests on early 20th century measurement methods rather than anything a lab would confirm today. What isn't in dispute is the name behind it: Pisistratus, the 6th century BC tyrant of Athens, is credited with the wave of olive planting that turned Attica into the region's defining olive economy, and this suburb sits on what was once part of that grove. Part of the trunk was cut for firewood during the wartime occupation of the 1940s, and it grew back regardless. It is now a protected natural monument, free to visit, standing in a small park behind the church that gives the area its name.