The Linden of Morat

In 1476 a messenger is said to have run from the battlefield at Morat to Fribourg waving a linden branch cut on the field, collapsed in the Bourg quarter, and the branch took root where he fell. That is the legend. The tree on the Place de l'Hotel-de-Ville today is a cutting of the tree the legend was told about, planted in 1984, and it is about forty years old. The original tilleul de Morat is recorded from the fifteenth century and stood in the Bourg for five hundred years. In 1983 a vehicle hit it and it had to be taken down. The University of Fribourg's botanical garden had kept a cutting, and that cutting went into the ground the following year beside the Fontaine Saint-Georges, where it still stands. So this is a young tree at a very old address, which is both the honest description and the interesting one. Fribourg has not let go of the story: there has been a television segment, a museum exhibition devoted to the linden, and for the battle's 550th anniversary in 2026 a second cutting is being planted about a hundred metres away on the Rue des Alpes. The square is public and free. The run is a legend, the felling is documented, and the tree in front of you is genetically the same plant as the one that fell.