The Plane Trees of La Rambla

Barcelona's most photographed street is really a 1.2 kilometre plane tree avenue with shops underneath it. Trees have grown on La Rambla since at least 1548, according to the city's own municipal archives, and the promenade has been replanted eleven times since, the surviving plane trees arriving in a systematic push starting in 1859 that brought Parisian-style boulevard planting to Barcelona, with early stock reportedly sourced from the Devesa park in Girona. Most of today's trees date to a wave planted between 1870 and 1894, which makes the oldest survivors well over a century old, though the exact figure varies tree to tree rather than holding to one planting date, and sixteen were replaced as recently as winter 2009. There are 256 plane trees along La Rambla today, spaced roughly eight metres apart the way 19th century planners specified for every new Barcelona street. Millions of people walk beneath them every year on their way to the Boqueria market or the port, most without registering that the canopy overhead predates the Sagrada Familia.