The Plane by the Garenmarkt Entrance

A ship loaded with gunpowder exploded here in 1807 and flattened much of this part of Leiden. The rubble field it left was known as the Grote Ruine, and it stayed waste ground until 1886, when municipal architect Daniel Knuttel laid a park across the scar. This plane, a few steps inside the Garenmarkt entrance, has stood over the result since close to the beginning. The national register of monumental trees puts its planting in the 1880s, which makes it around 140 years old. A historical survey of the park reaches the same answer from the other direction: the two monumental planes here measure 1.64 and 1.60 metres across the trunk, and trees that thick can very well date from the laying out of the park. Which of those two figures belongs to this tree and which to its neighbour on the southeast side, nobody has recorded, so we have not assigned one. If you have measured it, tell us. At the centre of the park stands Pieter van der Werff, the mayor who refused to surrender Leiden to the Spanish through the siege of 1573 and 1574. The park is small, free and open at any hour, with entrances on the Garenmarkt and the Doezastraat, and the two planes, the willow at the water and the silver maples make a circuit you can walk in ten minutes.