The Olive Grove of the Cimiez Monastery Garden

Franciscan monks reached this hilltop above Nice in 1546 and laid out a grid-patterned vegetable and orchard garden following the monastic planting rules of Albert the Great, a layout that, unusually, has not changed since. What grows there today, thousands of olive trees spread across the monastery garden and the adjoining Jardin des Arènes, includes specimens local sources place at more than four hundred years old, though no individual tree has ever had its own age separately measured or recorded, so the figure describes the grove rather than one named tree. The garden sits directly beside the ruins of a first century Roman amphitheatre, meaning visitors can stand among trees planted under the Ancien Régime while looking at stonework that predates them by a millennium and a half. Entry has always been free, and the grove today is as much a public living room as a historic garden: people picnic, paint and do yoga under trees that were already old when the Franciscans who planted their ancestors were still tending the hill.