The Plane on the Southeast Side

Leiden's monumental tree register counts this plane and the one at the Garenmarkt gate as two separate entries. The park's own historical survey counts them as a pair, and gives their trunk diameters as 1.64 and 1.60 metres without saying which belongs to which. Sixty-five metres of grass separate them. This is the one on the southeast side, the corner nearest the Doezastraat, and the register dates its planting to the 1880s. The survey's argument for the same date is the trunk itself: planes of that thickness can very well go back to 1886, when municipal architect Daniel Knuttel laid the park out. What he laid it out on is the more interesting half. In 1807 a ship carrying gunpowder exploded in the middle of the city and flattened much of this quarter. The ruined ground stayed empty for close to eighty years, known simply as the Grote Ruine, until the park covered it. The statue at its centre is Pieter van der Werff, the mayor who held Leiden through the Spanish siege of 1573 and 1574, which means the park commemorates one siege while standing on the wreckage of a different disaster entirely. Free, open at any hour, fifteen minutes on foot from the station. No girth has been published for this tree on its own. If you measure it, we will record it.