The Plane of the Certosa di Vigodarzere

Six and a quarter metres round and 32 metres tall, by Italy's national register of monumental trees, this London plane stands by itself in a ploughed field in a bend of the Brenta, with an empty Carthusian monastery for company. Work on the Certosa di Vigodarzere began in 1534 under Andrea Moroni, who also directed the building of Santa Giustina in Padua, and Carthusian monks lived here from 1560. A decree of the Venetian Republic closed the house in 1768, and the buildings went on to be a country villa, a farm, a barracks in the First World War and a powder store in the Second, according to the FAI. Today the complex is abandoned and cannot be visited, says the Paduan tree blog un albero al giorno, whose author photographed the plane here. The walk out is part of the reward. He describes crossing the Brenta bridge into Vigodarzere and following the cycle path along the top of the embankment upstream for under half an hour, then turning off on a track towards the Certosa. Round the buildings run a double row of old hornbeams and an avenue of limes towards the river, and then the plane appears out in the field. In the aerial pictures he took in the autumn of 2020 the whole crown had turned yellow. Nobody has published an age for it. If you know when it was planted, tell us.