The Elder Plane of Streliska

Two trees are all that is left of an avenue that once ran from the foot of Ljubljana Castle to the start of the road toward Dolenjska, a double row of planes planted along what was then the edge of the old city. Florijancic's 1744 map of Ljubljana shows the avenue already in place; today only two of its trees survive, both on Streliska ulica, both individually protected as natural values of national importance, a designation held by almost nothing else in the city's narrow historic centre. This one is the thicker of the pair, its trunk 596 centimetres around and its crown reaching 33 metres, making it one of the largest trees of its species anywhere in Slovenia. It has outlived the old fortifications it once grew beside by more than two centuries; Ljubljana's city walls came down long ago, but the avenue's last survivors kept growing regardless, witnesses to a street plan nobody alive remembers walking.