The Fig of the Picasso Gardens

This fig predates the garden built around it by decades. The Jardines de Picasso opened in 1981, laid out in a symmetrical petal pattern to mark the centenary of Picasso's birth in the city, but its two oldest Ficus macrophylla were already mature trees when the ground beneath them was formally landscaped, their aerial roots by then thick enough to rise nearly a metre clear of the soil. The city's own tagging scheme describes the pair as centenarian and among the largest of their kind found anywhere in Europe, a claim offered here with the same caution this site applies to any superlative no national register has independently confirmed. Between the two trees stands Siextasis, a sculpture by Malaga-born artist Miguel Ortiz Berrocal, better known for puzzle-like bronzes that separate into dozens of interlocking pieces, placed there as the garden's own tribute to Picasso. The pairing gives Jardines de Picasso an odd distinction: a public garden where the trees are older than the art dedicated to the city's most famous painter, and both were already there before the garden had a name.