The Horse Chestnut of San Bernardino, Triora

The church of San Bernardino is dedicated to Saint Bernardino of Siena, who came to preach in Triora around 1418, and its walls carry fifteenth-century frescoes, among them a Last Judgement crowded with demons, women in mitres and heretics in the flames. Outside it, Italy's national list of monumental trees records a horse chestnut 3.1 metres round and 20 metres tall. It is the smaller of Triora's three listed horse chestnuts; the other two stand together by the church of Sant'Agostino, a few hundred metres away, so all three make one short walk. The witch trials that began here in 1588 are told in the village's Museum of Ethnology and Witchcraft. The horse chestnut is a mountain tree from the Balkans, planted across Europe for its shade. In May it carries upright candles of white flowers flecked with pink and yellow, and in autumn it drops shiny brown conkers from spiky cases, while its big hand-shaped leaves turn yellow and rust. Nobody has published how old it is. If you know, tell us. It stands by a church and costs nothing to see.