The Plane Tree of the Autostazione
The oldest plane tree in Modena stands in a flowerbed in the middle of a coach station, and the last person to put a tape around it did so in 1986. The city's own 2015 census of thirty monumental trees gives it the title. The measurement, 4.25 metres of girth, comes from Valido Capodarca, who spent the 1980s surveying the region's notable trees and published eighty of them under a title that reads as a warning: Emilia-Romagna, ottanta alberi da salvare, eighty trees to save. The citizen registry that re-recorded the tree in October 2021 noted that the trunk has grown appreciably since and that nobody had taken a new figure. Nobody has dated it either, and we are not going to invent a number from the girth of a fast-growing species. If you know when it was planted, or you have five minutes and a tape measure, tell us and the page changes. Everything around it has been rebuilt into tarmac, kerbs and bus bays, and the tree kept its bed in the centre of the square. It is five minutes' walk from Modena's railway station, on open ground, free, and it is the easiest tree in this city to combine with a train.
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.
Piazzale of the Autostazione (coach/bus station), Via Benedetto Bacchini, ModenaYou can recognise it by where it stands, alone in a flowerbed in the middle of the coach station square, tarmac and bus bays all round it. The trunk measured 4.25 metres in 1986 and has grown since.
Free. Stands in a flowerbed roughly at the centre of the public square in front of Modena's Autostazione (coach station) on Via Benedetto Bacchini, open ground, no gate or appointment.
About 5 minutes' walk from Modena's main railway station (Modena centrale); the coach station itself is a public transport hub.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
