What is the oldest tree in Como?
Como's most celebrated tree is the Cedar of Lebanon in the grounds of Villa Olmo, which won Lombardy's Tree of the Year vote in 2024 and stands in a free public park on the lakefront. Italy's national register records girth, height and position for these trees and carries no age field at all, so this page gives no oldest-tree ranking by date. What it can say is that the villa gardens along Via Borgovico were planted through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the trees in them are as old as those gardens.
Every tree on this page comes from Italy's national register of monumental trees, cross-checked against Lombardy's regional list and the villas' own published histories. The register records girth, height and a surveyed position, and has no age field, which is why this page ranks nothing by date and several entries carry no age. The gardens along Via Borgovico were laid out through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, several trees planted in a single campaign in the eighteen seventies. Three of the nine stand inside Villa del Grumello's grounds, open Sundays and a limited weekday schedule, closed Saturdays, so the hours appear in each of those three entries. Two more stand apart from the lakefront walk, at Piazzale Camerlata and the church in Quarcino, neither with an age or a second source beyond the two Italian registers. Eleven further register entries are absent and blocked for a reason: three at Villa Saporiti are guided-visit only, five at Villa Erba are an avenue with no single place to stand, one is inside a school, one a private estate at Grandate, and one, an eight-hundred-year chestnut, is on private land and was found mutilated in 2025.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.