The Ginkgo of Piazzale Michelangelo

Millions of people photograph the view from Piazzale Michelangelo every year, and almost none of them photograph the tree they are standing under to do it. This ginkgo grows at the edge of the piazzale that architect Giuseppe Poggi built in 1875 as the grand viewing terrace for his newly reshaped city, planted among the dozens of ornamental species Poggi and his gardener Attilio Pucci chose to line the new hillside boulevards. Ginkgo biloba is often called a living fossil, the sole surviving member of a family of trees that flourished alongside dinosaurs and has barely changed since; this specimen, with a trunk three metres around, is a comparative newcomer at well under 150 years old, but it belongs to the oldest tree lineage on this entire list by a margin of tens of millions of years. Every November its fan shaped leaves turn a uniform gold and drop within days, all at once, rather than fading gradually the way most autumn colour does, briefly carpeting the ground in a colour that photographs even better than the skyline behind it. No exact planting date has been documented for this individual tree, only its presence in the same landscaping scheme as the piazzale itself.