The Cistercian Linden of Zlatá Koruna

Part of this trunk is stonework. Some time in the 19th century masons packed and reinforced the hollowing base of the village lime with masonry, and the upper trunk is held together with metal bands so that it does not split under its own weight. What they were propping up is the oldest tree in Zlatá Koruna and, by the Blanský les landscape administration's reckoning, the oldest in the whole protected area: 7.18 metres round when the ministry's assessors measured it in 1994, 17 to 18 metres tall, and somewhere between 600 and 800 years old. It did not always stand alone. A 17th-century chronicle describes it as one tree in an avenue of lindens running through the village, and this is the last of that line still standing. It was already several centuries old when the Cistercian abbey across the green was dissolved in 1785, and it has outlasted the monastery as a working institution by another two hundred and forty years. The best part is the address. It stands on the public green in front of house number 26, about 150 metres outside the monastery gate, which means no ticket, no opening hours and no closed Monday. The state protects it twice over, as a memorial tree since 1990 and a national one since 1994. Walk up and stand under it.