The Dorpslinde of Nuenen

On 28 December 2019 a group of former carnival princes planted a tree inside this tree. The mayor let it stay. De Dwersklippels, Nuenen's carnival club, put a young lime sapling into the hollow trunk of the village lime as a prank, exactly 25 years to the day after the old crown came off. The mayor settled the business by official proclamation: the sapling could remain, on condition the pranksters hold a small remembrance ceremony at the tree every 28 December. The trunk they planted it in is the tree that matters here. It is a gerechtslinde, a justice lime, under which judgments and announcements were made, put in around 1625 to 1650 and first recorded in the mayor's accounts of 1702. At 6.60 metres round it is the thickest large-leaved lime in the Netherlands, a species not common in this part of Brabant. In 1994 a tinder-fungus infection forced the removal of the upper crown, leaving a hollow shell like a pergola, and the age is read from growth rings still visible inside it and in one surviving thick branch. Vincent van Gogh lived in Nuenen from 1883 to 1885 and crossed this green daily. Tourist copy has him admiring this tree, which rests on his address rather than on any letter or sketch that names it. An iron fence has protected it since 1889. Free, in the open, at any hour.