The Great Plane of Palazzo Ducale

At 47 metres this plane is the tallest tree recorded anywhere in Emilia-Romagna, taller than any specimen in a region with no shortage of old parks and avenues. Its trunk measures 6.55 metres round, thick enough that it would take four adults linking arms to circle it. It grows a short walk from Palazzo Ducale, the summer residence Duke Ottavio Farnese began building in 1561 at the head of a park he laid out the same year. Neither the palace nor its grounds had an easy eighteenth century: during the War of the Austrian Succession in 1745, occupying troops under Prince Lobkowicz felled and burned every mature tree in the park, including those on the ornamental island at its centre, to fuel their camp fires. Duke Filippo di Borbone had the grounds replanted from 1749 under the French architect Ennemond Alexandre Petitot, and further plane trees went in around 1830 under Duchess Maria Luigia, Napoleon's second wife, who governed Parma as her own duchy after his fall. This plane's exact planting date is not recorded, but its size puts it among the park's oldest survivors. The park holds more than 1,500 catalogued trees today and opened to the public after Italian unification, when the ducal walls came down.