The Horse Chestnut of Quarcino

The church beside it is a thousand years old, and the tree cannot be, because the species had not arrived yet. Horse chestnut comes from the mountains of the Balkans and only spread through western European gardens from the sixteenth century, so every one in Italy was planted by somebody on a date somebody chose. Nobody wrote this one down. The national monumental register gives a trunk of 335 centimetres and no age, and the Italian tree register adds a health rating of good and no age either. What the tree does have is an unusually well pinned position. A photographer entered it in Wiki Loves Monuments in September 2018, filed under veteran trees of Como, and the coordinates on that image land within a metre or so of the register's own point, which is better location evidence than most undated trees get. The church is Santi Filippo e Giacomo, Romanesque, tenth century in its earliest phase and rebuilt twice since, standing in the hill neighbourhood of Quarcino, also called Sagnino, four kilometres above the lake. Locals have put it forward for FAI's Luoghi del Cuore, the heritage fund's public list of places people care about, which is a fair description of what is here: a small parish church, a big tree next to it, no crowd. No source records opening hours for the churchyard. In May the whole crown goes up in white candles.