What is the oldest tree in Lisbon?
The oldest tree in Lisbon is one of four olive trees outside the Capela de Santo Amaro in Alcântara, estimated at around 457 years old, the only trees in the city with documented ages predating the 18th century. They stand in a small hilltop garden with a well known river view, an eleven minute walk from Alcântara-Terra train station.
Lisbon keeps its oldest trees close to its water. The four olive trees at the Capela de Santo Amaro have grown against the wall of a small circular hilltop chapel in Alcântara since sometime in the 1500s, making them roughly 457 years old by the city's own classification records, decades older than anything else on this list. The chapel itself, built in 1549, is a national monument, but the trees have outlasted several rounds of restoration to the building beside them. Their runner up in age is Lisbon's dragon tree in the Jardim Botânico da Ajuda, which was already a mature adult when transplanted into the city's first botanical garden in 1768, making it at least 258 years old. Between them, the two trees frame two very different kinds of longevity: quiet olives outside a functioning chapel, and a dramatic, half collapsed dragon tree behind paid admission and a steel prop. Getting to the olive trees is straightforward: Alcântara-Terra train station on the Cascais line, then an eleven minute walk uphill past the Miradouro de Santo Amaro, one of the better river views in the city and usually far quieter than the famous ones downtown.
One of Lisbon's trees also appears in Europe's Best Tree City Trips, a themed collection spanning several cities.