What is the oldest tree in Kaunas?
The Peace Hill Oak (Taikos kalno ąžuolas), a pedunculate oak in the pine woods of Pažaislio šilas above the Kaunas reservoir, estimated at roughly 600 years. It carries a name and role handed down from an older oak nearby that was lost to arson in 2007.
Kaunas's Peace Hill Oak is not the original bearer of its own name. An older oak, roughly 800 years old by some estimates, stood nearby and was already dying from storm damage when a 2001 memorial installation was placed beside it; a further arson attack in 2007 finished it off, and it was removed. This living oak, judged healthy enough to carry the name and the city's 2001 natural-monument designation forward, has done that job since. It stands in Pažaislio šilas, a pine wood beside the Kauno marios reservoir and the Pažaislis Monastery, kept alive today with periodic treatment for internal rot. The other three trees span very different parts of Kaunas: a 270-year linden confirmed by growth-ring count in Vytautas Park, within the city's Ąžuolynas oak forest; a golden willow by the Nemunas-Neris confluence that a 2016 environment ministry order protected for its unusual colouring, now showing signs of fungal decline in 2026 photographs; and an unusually thick, multi-trunked lime in the Vilijampolė district whose age nobody has recorded.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.