The Oak of Martinikerkhof

For decades in the twentieth century, Groningen parked cars on top of this oak's roots. Martinikerkhof, one of the city's three great squares, spent the years up to the 1970s as a parking lot before the city cleared the cars and let it become what it is today, a quiet, largely car-free green space in the shadow of the Martini Tower. The oak stood through all of it, in the middle of the square, and the municipality's own 2021 survey rates its condition as moderate to poor, noting plainly that the tree appears to be declining in recent years even though the ground around it is now far better than the parking lot it endured for decades. Whatever damage was done may simply have come too late to reverse. Planted sometime around 1910 to 1920, the oak is old enough to have watched the square through both its worst years and its recovery, and its trunk base is described as intact even as its crown has thinned. It stands in the open, free, at the centre of Martinikerkhof, a short walk from the tower whose bells have marked Groningen's hours for centuries. If its condition improves or worsens, this page should be updated to match; tell us if you have seen it recently.