What is the oldest tree in Imperia?
No reliable age is published for any of these trees. By size the likeliest oldest is the sweet chestnut on the Passo Furchè above Ceriana, 8.5 metres round on the national list; a mountain-bike guide calls it 1,300 years old, which nobody has measured. A trunk that size could be several centuries old.
These trees spread over the valleys behind Imperia rather than one town, so plan them as drives. The Bunya pine stands in Imperia itself, on Viale Matteotti at the Palazzo della Provincia. Five kilometres inland, the hackberry stands on the cobbled churchyard of San Michele Arcangelo at Diano Borello, with a view over the Diano valley, and up the Impero valley the two downy oaks grow at Maro Castello in the commune of Borgomaro, near the ruins of the castle of Maro. The big chestnut is the most remote: it grows on the Passo Furchè, on a mountain ridge above Ceriana, reached by a long climb and then a dirt road, and it is the one to plan a day around. Triora, high in the Argentina valley and known as the site of the last witch trials held in Italy, has two tall listed horse chestnuts by the church of Sant'Agostino. All five stand by churches, on a public street or on open mountain land, and none charges entry, though for the oaks at Maro Castello we could not confirm whether the meadow they grow in is open, so look from the lane.
One of Imperia's trees also appears in The Tallest Trees We Have Measured.