These four trees cluster more closely than they first look. Three, at the University of Deusto, a walled almshouse garden and Bilbao's largest park, sit within a kilometre of each other. The fourth, a famous square of century-old planes downtown, is a further kilometre's walk beyond them. Three of the four have never been measured, only ever described as over a century old, and this page repeats that honestly rather than sharpening it into a number nobody has taken a tape to.
0 of 4 visited in Bilbao
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The Plane Trees of Jardines de Albia
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · over a century · Abando
A photograph from the 1940s shows these plane trees already standing clear of the five-storey buildings around them. They still do. Jardines de Albia is barely 4,500 square metres, one block of green in Bilbao's Abando district, and the trees are what the Bilbao daily Deia reached for in 2023 when it called the square almost unchanged: grandes plataneros, more than a hundred years old, grown to the height of the facades that enclose them.
Stand in front of the Antonio Trueba statue, put up in 1892, and you get the whole square at once: bronze poet, gravel, crowns closing overhead. The place has been named three different things in its life, Jardines de Albia, Plaza de Trueba and Jardines de Berastegui, and people here still use all three.
What nobody has done is measure one of these trees. No source names an individual specimen, gives it a girth or records when it went in, so the age is what that 1940s photograph will carry and nothing more: over a century, not a figure anyone has taken a tape to. Read the pin the same way. The coordinates are the square's, not any one trunk's, which matters less here than usual because the square is the thing you came to stand in. If you know when Albia was planted, or which of these planes is the oldest, tell us.
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2
The Bald Cypress of Deusto
Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) · not documented · Deusto
A tree from the swamps of the American south stands at the front door of a Basque university, looking across the river at the Guggenheim. Bald cypress belongs in standing water in Louisiana and Florida, and this one has spent its life on a paved forecourt in rainy Bilbao, at the entrance to the 1886 main building of the Universidad de Deusto.
The Bilbao history site Absolut Bilbao puts it at nearly 25 metres tall, with a crown more than eight metres across and a trunk around three metres thick. Treat those numbers as reported rather than measured: they come from a single source, and three metres of trunk would be exceptional for the species outside its native bottomlands. Large, and roughly stated, is the honest reading.
Its party trick is seasonal. Taxodium distichum is a conifer that goes bare, turning rust and copper in November and dropping its needles while the evergreens around it stay green, which is the thing visitors argue about before somebody looks it up.
The building behind it dates from 1886 and the tree stands on its forecourt, but nothing we could reach dates the tree, and a university campus plants trees in every decade of its life. This one may be original to the building or may be decades younger. Nobody has put a number on it. If you know when it went in, or have taken a tape to that trunk, tell us.
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3
The Centenary Trees of Parque de la Misericordia
Canary Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis) · over a century · Indautxu
More than forty species of tree grow inside the walls of a Bilbao almshouse. The Santa y Real Casa de Misericordia moved to this site in Indautxu in 1872 and laid a romantic-style garden out around itself, and two sources describe what stands there now in the same terms: Spanish Wikipedia counts over forty different species and calls them arboles centenarios, and a Bilbao visitor guide says plainly that these are trees with more than a century of life behind them.
The garden is the destination here rather than any one trunk. It is walled, gated shut at night and only 16,600 square metres, so you can walk all of it in twenty minutes and see most of what it holds. A tall palm dominates the middle. Among the specimens people point to are sequoias, magnolias, lindens, a Canary Island date palm and a bald cypress.
Be clear about what is not known. No source names a single tree in this garden, dates one or measures one. The century-old claim covers the planting as a group, and the species above are what guides and visitors report rather than a survey anyone has published. The garden was laid out in 1872, which fits trees of that age and is not proof that any particular one stood here at the start. If the Misericordia keeps records of what went in when, we would like to see them.
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4
The Centenary Horse Chestnut of Parque de Doña Casilda
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · over a century · Abando
In a park stocked with trees from five continents, the specimen the guides keep naming is a horse chestnut. Parque de Doña Casilda de Iturrizar is Bilbao's largest central park, 115,200 square metres of ponds, pergola and imported botany begun in 1907, and its planting runs to dozens of species from all over the world. The one that gets singled out is Aesculus hippocastanum, a Balkan tree so common on northern European streets that children in four countries grow up throwing sticks at it, and here it is always described the same way: centenario, over a hundred years old.
Worth knowing how thin that is. Two separately hosted travel pages make the claim, and they make it in almost the same words, un centenario castaño de Indias, which reads like both are repeating one municipal or tourist-board line rather than two people noticing the same tree. Take it as decent evidence that the tree is there and what species it is, and weaker evidence about its age. Nobody has measured it, and centenario is the only number anyone offers.
No source says where in the park it stands either, and 115,200 square metres is a lot of ground to sweep for one chestnut. May makes it easier. The crown goes up in white candles and there is no mistaking which tree you are looking at. If you find it, tell us where it is.
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