The Canova Cypress of the Eremitani

The cypress behind the apse of the Eremitani church has outlived the monument it was planted to shade. In late summer 1807 a cinerary urn carved by Antonio Canova for Countess Louise von Callenberg reached Padua and was set in a small cemetery here, and the Diocese of Padua says this cypress was planted for it. The Paduan tree blog un albero al giorno thinks the tree was probably standing already. On 11 March 1944 American bombs mutilated the church and took most of Mantegna's frescoes in its Ovetari chapel, and Canova's monument was lost. The urn was counted among the losses until it was found in the church's rectory, two years before it went on show for the first time in 2025. The cypress stayed. Its trunk has lost the outer, stringy bark a cypress normally wears, and it leans east, both of which the blog's author reads as the work of the blast. By his own tape it is about 15 metres tall and two metres round, and the diocese puts it at more than 200 years. An 1831 illustration by Pietro Chevalier and a later watercolour by Bartolomeo Belzoni in the city library show it already tall, and in 2024 Michele Armelin gave it a book of its own. A high wall hides the trunk today, so look for the dark spire against the brick apse from the street.