This tree is on a map drawn in 1741, which is a rarer thing than being old. Most claims about an ancient tree's age come from tradition; this one comes from an inventory of the courtyard that counted, alongside the olive, ninety-five orange trees, six cypresses, ten palms and a chinaberry. Two and a half centuries later roughly half its trunk is gone. It hollowed through the twentieth century, decayed badly from the 1980s, and what leans toward the fountain now is a shell that still manages about sixty kilos of olives a year. The cathedral chapter has conserved what remains and planted a young olive nearby to take over eventually. In 2018 researchers took leaf and fruit samples without harming it and found a cultivar barely recorded anywhere else, which they have proposed naming after the city. The fountain beside it is officially the Fuente de Santa Maria, finished in December 1741, but everyone calls its spout the Cano del Olivo, after the tree. Suitors were once told to drink from it for luck in love.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Patio de los Naranjos, Mezquita-Catedral, Calle del Cardenal Herrero, 14003 Cordoba
You can recognise it by its hollow trunk, roughly half of it gone, leaning toward the fountain beside it. It stands in the Patio de los Naranjos at the Mezquita-Catedral.
Free, the Patio de los Naranjos is open daily 08:30 to 19:00 (the prayer hall is ticketed separately)
In the historic centre, a few minutes on foot from anywhere in the old town
In fruit
September to November: the harvest, when the fruit turns from green to black
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
