The Cedar of Lebanon of Piazza della Pace

Piazzale della Pace did not exist as a square until after the Second World War, laid out over ground reshaped by the bombing that damaged much of central Parma. What it holds today is an English-style lawn framed by remnants of a much older avenue: four large plane trees, survivors of a row that once counted 65, and this cedar of Lebanon, the piazza's one conifer. Protected by the city since the 1950s, the cedar was formally added to Italy's National List of Monumental Trees and the regional list only recently, alongside the square's plane trees. Its girth of over four metres marks it as a substantial, century-old specimen even before the paperwork caught up with what Parma's gardeners already knew. Tree climbers and arborists check it regularly now, work that has included tomography scans of the trunk and root aeration to keep both the tree and the pedestrians beneath it safe. Cedrus libani is native to the mountains of Lebanon, Syria and Turkey and was one of the first conifers European gardeners collected purely for its shape and scale rather than for timber. In a square defined by its open lawn, this is the one thing in it with a genuinely different silhouette.