The Chestnut of Prinsentuin

The Prinsentuin has been walled off from the rest of Groningen since 1626, when it was laid out as a private pleasure garden for the region's stadholders, and the wall is still what makes it feel like a secret in the middle of a busy city centre. Visitors reach it through a gate on the Turfsingel topped with a working sundial from 1731, accurate enough to mark day length and sunrise and sunset as well as the hour, or through a smaller door on Kattenhage. Entry is free and has been for as long as records go back. This horse chestnut, which the tree register dates to around 1850 to 1860, is not part of the garden's original seventeenth-century planting, arriving roughly two centuries after the walls went up, but it has still had well over 150 years inside them. Horse chestnut is not native to the Netherlands, imported from the Balkans as an ornamental tree from the sixteenth century onward, and this one has grown up sheltered from wind and street salt by walls built for a stadholder's roses rather than for any tree. It stands in the open garden, free, daily until sunset, a short walk from Martinikerkhof.