The Moreton Bay Fig of Villa Bellini

Fourteen metres around the trunk, and a crown that reaches forty-three metres across. On the figures published by Italy's tree registers, only one Moreton Bay fig in Sicily is bigger, the giant in Palermo's botanical garden. What stops people in Villa Bellini, though, is at ground level. A Ficus macrophylla drops aerial roots from its branches and thickens them into buttresses once they reach soil, and this one has thrown a long, coiling sprawl of them out across the ground, the kind of shape that has people reaching for octopus tentacles to describe it. Its age is genuinely unsettled. One contributor account gives a planting date of 1860, which would make it about 165 years old and would have put it in the ground the year before Italy became a single country. The Italian registry that measured it most recently states an age of around 146. The two do not reconcile, neither has been withdrawn, so both are here. The recent record is firmer. A 2026 assessment rates its health as adequate rather than good, and the bark carries graffiti and paint from visitors who could not keep their hands off it. Walk under it, walk around it, leave it alone. It stands in Catania's main public park on Via Etnea, free and open daily.