Quercia Castagnara

State television found this oak in 2024, and the ministry that runs Italy's monumental-tree register did the finding: the Quercia Castagnara went out on RAI as part of a national campaign for International Forest Day, freshly photographed by a local photographer who had been documenting it for years. Locals call it Nonna Quercia, Grandma Oak, and the retelling ties it to the Battle of Novi in 1799, said to mark a spot French infantry held that day. No military record backs that story; it survives as neighbourhood memory rather than history, and the tree is kept apart from it here. What is measured: 5.40 metres round at chest height by the national register, twenty-two metres tall, a crown spanning some 28 metres, and an estimated 300 to 305 years old. A 2024 newspaper account gives a rougher 'over four metres' for the girth, which is the same tree read with less precision rather than a disagreement worth resolving. It stands on a public rural road in the hills above Novi Ligure, in Piedmont's own register of its most important trees, and has hosted guided heritage walks since at least 2018. Getting there needs a car; nothing marks a fixed parking spot, so the last stretch is worked out on the day.