The Old Town Gate Oak

The law draws a circle round this oak. It runs 13.4 metres from the trunk in every direction, and inside it nothing may be done that would harm the tree, which is a generous amount of ground to fence off with a regulation in the middle of a city. The oak stands at the southern tip of the Moravské náměstí park, close to where the Tišnovská brána, the Tišnov Gate, once let travellers through Brno's walls. The gate is gone. So are the walls, taken down between 1809 and 1859 and replaced by the ring of parks the tree now grows in. Its measurements come from different decades and it shows. Brno's heritage encyclopedia recorded 410 centimetres round in 2004 and 423 in 2010; the national register carries 480, from a record last touched in 2018. Height is about 25 metres, and the age is given as more than 170 years, which is as precise as anyone has been willing to be. One honest note. The freshest photograph we could find of this particular oak, rather than of its better known neighbour 130 metres north, was taken in May 2015, and the register still lists it as standing. If you get there before we do, tell us what you found.