The Atlas Cedar of Piazza Italia

This cedar is rooted in the site of a fortress Perugia demolished out of spite. The Rocca Paolina was a papal stronghold built over the houses of the families who opposed the pope, and when the city came out from under papal rule in 1860 it tore the fortress down and laid Piazza Italia over the ground, a square whose entire argument was that the Rocca no longer stood there. The flowerbeds went in with it, and the Atlas cedar in them is one of the survivors of that planting, alongside a red fir of similar age. Local sources call it a century old specimen without fixing a year, so over a century is the honest figure rather than a precise one; the register adds 390 centimetres of girth and 23 metres of height. What makes it worth the two minute walk up from Piazza IV Novembre is where it stands, at the top of Corso Vannucci on the edge of the terrace that looks out over the Umbrian valley. The fortress is still down there under your feet, its lower streets preserved and walkable, which is how most people now arrive at the square, riding escalators up through the ruins of the thing the cedar replaced.