What is the oldest tree in Dubrovnik?

Dubrovnik's oldest trees are the two Oriental Planes on Trsteno's village square, planted around 500 years ago by a sea captain who brought saplings home from Constantinople. Their trunks are five metres across, among the largest of their kind in continental Europe.

Trsteno sits about 20 kilometres up the coast from Dubrovnik's old town, within the city's own administrative boundary, and its two ancient plane trees have grown on the village's public square since around 1500, when a sea captain, Florio Jakob Antunov by tradition, planted five saplings brought home from Constantinople beside a natural spring. Three did not survive; two did, and five centuries of Adriatic weather, wars and fires have not managed to finish the job since. The trees came through the 1991 war that reached this coastline, a forest fire that swept the surrounding hills in 2000, and a smaller fire in February 2020, when burning weeds nearby sent a spark into a rotten branch; firefighters extinguished it with foam before serious damage was done. Croatia put the pair forward for European Tree of the Year in 2018. They stand outside the gate of the adjoining Trsteno Arboretum, a separate paid attraction, on open public ground beside the coast road, free for anyone passing through the village to stop and see.

Read the full story of The Plane Trees of Trsteno, or see all 4 remarkable ancient trees in Dubrovnik.

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