The Cedar of Villa Olmo

Lombardy held a public vote for its tree of the year in 2024, and this cedar won it. The Comune di Como announced the result that November, crediting not the measurements but the setting, the history and the number of people with a memory attached to it. The measurements are worth having anyway. The trunk runs to roughly eight metres around, the thickest in Como's monumental list, and the tree stands twenty five metres high, with several heavy limbs forking low from the base rather than rising as one clean stem. Three registers put its age near two hundred years and agree closely: the national monumental register, the Italian tree register RAMI at about 197 years, and a provincial survey at roughly 200. It has not had an easy decade. Storms broke major branches in 2016 and again the following year. As of the summer of 2026 it stands inside a ring of protective stakes with a wrap around the bark, which is what a city does for a tree it has decided to keep. The park behind Villa Olmo is Como's main public green space, five hectares and some 780 trees, free and open daily. Generations of Como children have played in this cedar's shade, and the lakefront walk north to Villa del Grumello and Villa Geno starts here.