The Stone Pines of the Torre Girona Gardens

A supercomputer lives in the chapel these pines grew up beside. Torre Girona was built in 1860 as the summer estate of Manuel Girona i Agrafel, banker and later mayor of Barcelona; the technical university took the grounds over a century later, built its northern campus around them, and installed the MareNostrum machine inside the estate's deconsecrated chapel, where it sits in a glass box under the vaulting. The two stone pines predate all of it. They were planted around 1904, are catalogued together by the city as a single protected item, and stand 21 metres tall on trunks 3.6 metres round. A Catalan gardens journal that surveyed this garden calls them colossal and credits them with witnessing more than a hundred years of the estate's history, which for once is not an exaggeration: they were there for the private garden, the university, the construction and the machine. The access is worth reading carefully. This was private university ground until an April 2019 agreement handed its management to the city, and it is a public park now. What we could not confirm is today's exact timetable: the hours are posted, they are seasonal and the gates close at night, so check before making a special trip late in the day.