The Plane Tree of Travessa do Arco da Torre

Two minutes from the queue at the Torre de Belém, on a back lane most visitors never turn into, stands a plane tree 29 metres tall. Travessa do Arco da Torre runs parallel to Avenida da Torre de Belém, near Largo da Princesa, and this is the tree that overtops the rooflines along it. The trunk is 3.75 metres round and the crown spreads to nearly 27.5 metres, close to park dimensions for something growing out of a public street with no garden around it. Street planes are usually cut back hard for the wires and the windows. This one has been left to spread. The register recorded 150 years when it was measured in 2010, so roughly 165 now, and the independent coverage of Lisbon's classified trees gives it about the same. It was classified in 2000. That age puts its planting in the 1860s, when Belém was still being stitched into the city and long before the waterfront acquired its monuments, its museums and its crowds. Everything that now draws several million people a year arrived within sight of this tree, and it has watched the lot from one street back, over the roofs, with a couple of parked cars underneath it.