The Pálffy Oak of Memories

This oak is older than the park it stands in. Experts reckon it predates Malacky's castle park by about a century, which means it was already growing when the Pálffy family arrived in the seventeenth century, built their castle and laid out the grounds around it. That is where its name comes from: the tree that remembers the Pálffys coming. It is a pedunculate oak of more than 500 years, twenty metres tall, 6.6 metres round and carrying a crown 31 metres wide. The Slovak nomination tells its life through Napoleonic troops passing through town, epidemics, fires and market days, all of which the town lived through while the oak stood at the edge of what became the park. In 2023 it won Slovakia's Tree of the Year with 4,201 of some 19,000 votes, and in 2024 it placed fourteenth in Europe. A Slovak public broadcaster went further and called it the second most famous tree in Europe. After vandalism, the trunk now stands behind a protective fence. The park itself, Zámocký park, is a National Cultural Monument and an ordinary place to walk, free and ungated. The oak is near its eastern edge; our pin is approximate, so walk that side and look for the fence. Malacky is its own trip rather than a stop on a Bratislava afternoon: 44 to 48 minutes on the hourly direct train from Bratislava hlavná stanica.