The Ficus of Villa Trabia

A single 1910 inventory of Villa Trabia's grounds recorded 2,790 plant species on one aristocratic estate, and one of the Ficus macrophylla planted for that collection is still standing, its trunk now nearly five metres around. The villa belonged to the Lucchesi Palli family, princes of Campofranco, who built it in the 18th century and spent the following hundred years turning the grounds into one of Palermo's most serious private botanical collections before the city eventually took the park over as public land. Roughly twenty other fig trees share the grounds today, descendants and companions from the same planting era, but this one's circumference sets it apart from the rest. The villa building itself now houses a municipal office and a public library, an unglamorous second act for grounds a prince once filled with rarities gathered from across the world for no reason beyond having them. The park was renamed in 2024 for Ninni Cassara, a police officer killed by the mafia in 1985, giving Villa Trabia the same layered history as Palermo's Falcone tree across town: a garden built for private pleasure now doubling as memorial ground. Open daily, free, no ticket required to stand beneath it.