Five metres round the trunk and twenty-seven metres tall, and it is only the largest of four. The national register lists four monumental hackberries in this one small park in Varedo, spread across about ninety metres: 500 centimetres of girth on this one, then 450, 390 and 350 on the others. Most Italian towns would be pleased with one. They run along the edge of Parco 1 Maggio, the green between the town hall and the parish church, so the group works as a border rather than a set of specimens on a lawn. You walk along them instead of around them, and the biggest declares itself without anyone having to point. Lombardy's regional tourism board singles out that largest trunk as measuring over five metres round and puts its diameter near 165 centimetres, where the national register's own figure works out closer to 159. Two measurements of the same tree, taken by different people on different days, and the difference is not worth arguing about. The journey is a real day trip rather than a Milan stroll: the Milano-Asso line from Cadorna reaches Varedo in about twenty-five minutes, and the park is under ten minutes on foot from the station, free and open during park hours. No age has been recorded for any of the four. If you know what dates them, tell us.
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Getting there
Parco 1 Maggio, Piazza della Pace, 20814 Varedo (MB), Italy
You can recognise it by the thickest trunk in the row, five metres round, in the line of hackberries edging the park between the town hall and the parish church. The next largest of the four measures 450 centimetres.
Free. Stands in Parco 1 Maggio, a public urban park between Varedo's town hall and its parish church; the in-lombardia.it source states explicitly that it is freely visitable during park opening hours (liberamente visitabile negli orari di apertura del parco).
Varedo railway station (Trenord, Milano-Asso line), about 25 minutes from Milano Cadorna, then a short walk of under 10 minutes to Piazza della Pace in the town centre.
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: MASAF, Elenco degli alberi monumentali d'Italia
- MASAF national monumental-tree register, sheet 05/L677/MB/03, comune Varedo, locality Parco I Maggio, girth 500 cm, height 27 m ()
- in-lombardia.it
