The Taşlı Çınar

A stone was lodged inside this tree's bark for roughly three centuries, and until about ten years ago you could still see it. According to the story attached to the tree, Sultan Ahmed I rode past on his white horse sometime between 1590 and 1617 while the Alemdar gate and fountain to what is now Gülhane Park were being built, and a stone kicked loose from a horseshoe struck the sapling and stayed there as it grew, sealed a few metres up the trunk like a fossil. Whether or not the horse is real, the tree is: Istanbul's own monumental tree registry lists it at roughly 446 years old, 26 metres tall, with a trunk 328 centimetres around, the thickest Oriental plane in the district. The embedded stone was removed during conservation work about a decade ago, leaving a visible cavity where it used to sit. What remains is a tree that has watched the road outside Gülhane Park go from Ottoman thoroughfare to tram line, still standing exactly where a legend says a sultan's horse put it there.