The Archdevil of Villa Marietti Radice Fossati

The comune's own page for this hackberry calls it arcidiavolo, the archdevil, after a folk tale that blamed its hooked leaves on Lucifer, said to have carried the species down from heaven clutched in his claws. The city's monumental-tree list is usually a good deal drier than that. The tree stands in the park of Villa Marietti Radice Fossati, in Villapizzone, northwest of the centre. The villa was given its rural character by the Radice Fossati family, fell into disrepair through the 1970s, and was pulled back out of it by a small experimental community of Jesuit fathers. The Comune di Milano took ownership in 1993 and confirmed the community's loan of the buildings, which have been residential ever since. So the buildings are somebody's home and the park around them is not, and the city says plainly that with the discretion due to an inhabited place you may pass through the gate and visit the park. The trunk measures 4.2 metres round and the crown spreads more than 20 metres, throwing shade over roughly 200 square metres by the comune's reckoning. Its roots, structure and vegetative state are all recorded as good, and nothing on record says the tree has ever needed work. Nobody has published an age for it, only that girth, among the largest for the species anywhere in Milan.