Il Ginkgo dell'Orto Botanico di Brera

Behind Palazzo Brera's courtyard grows a pair of trees older than the idea of Italy itself, a male and a female ginkgo, planted together in 1775 when Empress Maria Theresa's new botanical garden was barely a year old, grown from seed carried directly from China less than two decades after the species had reached Europe at all. Ginkgo biloba is often called a living fossil, essentially unchanged for over 200 million years and the sole survivor of a family that once grew alongside dinosaurs; this pair is a comparative sapling by that measure, but at somewhere between 235 and 251 years old, depending on whether growth-ring calculation or the garden's own planting record is trusted, they are the oldest documented trees in Milan by a wide margin. In March 2026 the university marked their joint 250th anniversary with a public conference built entirely around the two trees. Every November their fan-shaped leaves turn a uniform gold and drop within days rather than fading gradually, briefly carpeting the beds around them. Entry to the garden is free, a rarity among Milan's oldest sites, down a courtyard most visitors to the Pinacoteca next door never think to enter.