Potsdam's thickest protected oak is called the thousand-year oak, and nobody has ever measured the thousand years. It stands in the Schlosspark Sacrow, 685 centimetres round. Five of the nine trees here stand in Potsdam itself, among them columnar oaks on Bassinplatz and a lime in front of a sacristy on Weberplatz. The other four, two limes and two oaks, stand just across the Glienicke bridge on the Berlin bank, a twelve-minute tram ride from Potsdam Hauptbahnhof, inside the UNESCO World Heritage parkland. Only one of the nine has a published age.
0 of 9 visited in Potsdam
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · Schlosspark Glienicke, Berlin side of the Glienicke Bridge
Two hundred metres from this lime tree is the bridge where the Cold War traded people. Glienicker Brücke carried the spy exchanges between the Americans and the Soviets, and the border ran down the middle of the water beneath it. The tree stands on the eastern bank, which is to say in Berlin, though it is a twelve-minute tram ride from Potsdam's main station and a long way from anything a Berliner thinks of as the city. It is a small-leaved lime, a Winter-Linde, protected by the Land of Berlin as a natural monument under the number 6-99/B, standing in the open parkland of Park Jagdschloss Glienicke around the old hunting lodge. What that protection does not come with is information. The register gives a species, a parcel number and a place, and records no age, no girth and no note on the tree's condition, because it is a legal instrument rather than a survey. So this entry is thinner than most here, and it says so. One official source names the tree and nothing else we could find does. What that source does establish is the thing worth walking for: somebody looked at this particular lime, among all the trees in a large park, and decided it was not to be cut down.
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · Schlosspark Glienicke, Berlin side of the Glienicke Bridge
People took tea under this lime, and the floor they did it on is still there. A mosaic pavement near the Lions Fountain in the Schlossgarten marks the spot where visitors to Prince Carl of Prussia's estate sat beneath the tree, and the park's own account calls it one of the most impressive solitary trees on the estate. Berlin's register of natural monuments agrees in its own dry way. It gives the tree a number, 6-100/B, and a name, Königslinde, the King's Linden, which is unusual in a document that mostly records species and parcel numbers and then stops. The garden around it was laid out from 1816 by Peter Joseph Lenné for Prince Carl, an English landscape of long sightlines on a Prussian riverbank, and it is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage site covering the palaces and parks of Potsdam and Berlin. It is open, free, and has no gate. Neither the register nor the park's history gives this lime an age or a girth, so it gets neither here. It stands on Königstraße opposite the Wiesenteich pond, on the Berlin side of the Glienicke bridge, twelve minutes from Potsdam Hauptbahnhof on the 93 tram, and it is the tree on this walk that people actually sat under.
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Schlosspark Glienicke, Berlin side of the Glienicke Bridge
Berlin protects this oak by law and almost nothing else about it is on record. It appears in the Land of Berlin's register of natural monuments as 6-105/B, a Stiel-Eiche, a Pedunculate Oak, standing about 150 metres north of Königstraße 35C in Schlosspark Glienicke. That entry gives a species, a parcel and a position, and there it ends: no age, no girth, no word on the tree's condition, because the register exists to say what may not be felled rather than to describe what is there. So this is a tree you go and read for yourself. It grows in the landscape garden Peter Joseph Lenné began laying out in 1816 for Prince Carl of Prussia, a park of engineered views designed to look accidental, now inside the UNESCO World Heritage site that covers the palaces and parks of Potsdam and Berlin. Oaks are the long-lived furniture of gardens like this one, and often older than the design around them. The one fact the register does carry says something a tape measure would not: out of the thousands of trees standing in this parkland, somebody walked up to this one and wrote it down. It is a few minutes further into the park than the two protected limes. If you get a tape round it, we would like the number.
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · 300 years · Volkspark Klein-Glienicke, Berlin side of the Glienicke Bridge
The oak was here first. The Jägerhof in Volkspark Klein-Glienicke went up some time before 1830, and by the reckoning of the German veteran-tree archive that measured this tree, it was already more than a hundred years old when the builders arrived. That puts its beginning before roughly 1730, which makes 300 years a fair estimate and not a precise one. Nobody has cored it, and Berlin's register of natural monuments, which protects it as 6-73/B, has no age field to put a figure in. The girth is firmer: 566 centimetres at chest height, taped in 2023. Nearly six metres of trunk, and by a wide margin the heaviest tree on this walk. It stands high above the Havel path near the Krughorn headland, south along the park from the Glienicke bridge and about fifteen to twenty minutes on foot from the other three trees here. Berlin bought the estate in the 1930s and opened it to the public, so the ground under this oak has been walkable for the better part of a century. Before that it was hunting country, which is what a Jägerhof is for. The lodge was built for the sport. The oak was simply standing in the way of it, and outlived the whole arrangement.
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Sacrow
Potsdam's register calls this the thousand-year oak, and nobody has ever counted the thousand years. The name is the city's own designation for natural monument number 15, and it is a title rather than a date: the same register gives the tree a girth and a coordinate and leaves the age field out entirely.
The girth is the part that holds. At 685 centimetres round, close to seven metres of trunk, it is the thickest oak on Potsdam's whole list of natural monuments. Two more protected oaks stand a short walk away along the Krampnitzer Strasse, at 600 and 575 centimetres, and this one still outweighs them both. A pedunculate oak of that size is old by any reckoning. How old is a question a tape measure alone cannot settle, and the register does not try.
It stands in the Schlosspark Sacrow, the landscape park on the Havel shore laid out to a design by Lenné, open to walk in daylight and free. Someone photographed the spot in June 2025, which is the most recent sign of life on record, though the register does not say when its girth was taken.
So the honest version is this: Potsdam's thickest protected oak, wearing a name it may or may not have earned. If you know when it was last measured, or have a better idea of its age, tell us.
Pedunculate Oak, columnar form (Quercus robur 'Fastigiata') · Brandenburger Vorstadt / Innenstadt
Most oaks spread. These two go straight up. The pair on Bassinplatz are fastigiate oaks, a columnar form of the ordinary pedunculate oak that holds its branches close to the trunk and grows like a flame rather than a dome. Potsdam protects both as natural monuments, numbers 31 and 32, standing about forty metres apart on the same square.
The surprise is in the register's tape measure. It gives the larger one 600 centimetres round, six metres of trunk, which is a girth you expect from a broad veteran in open parkland and not from a cultivar bred to stay narrow. The second comes in at a more ordinary 395. We have not been able to check the bigger figure, and a number that size on a columnar tree could be a measurement taken around more than one stem, so read it as the register's word until somebody confirms it.
What is not in doubt is that both are standing: each was photographed in June 2026. The register gives neither of them an age, and nothing else we have found does either.
They make an odd sight in a city square, two green columns where you would expect a spreading crown, and they are among the easiest protected trees in Potsdam to reach, on open public ground in the centre. If you know how old they are, or have run a tape around the big one yourself, tell us.
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · Babelsberg Nord (Weberviertel)
Potsdam's register places this lime with unusual precision: by the church, in front of the sacristy. Most entries give a street. This one tells you which door to stand at.
It is a small-leaved lime, natural monument number 53, which the register measures at 380 centimetres round, close to four metres of trunk on a city square in Babelsberg. The register gives it no age, and we have found nobody who has dated it, so this page does not guess.
Weberplatz holds a second protected tree about seventy metres away, a white mulberry of nearly the same girth at the corner of the Lutherstrasse, and it is worth a look on the way past.
Here is the gap we will not paper over. The most recent photograph we can find of this spot dates from 2011, and it shows the square rather than this trunk. The lime is still on the register, but we cannot show you dated proof that it stands today, and a register is a list of what was protected rather than a report on what survived.
So this is a tree to check as much as to collect. If you pass the church on Weberplatz, look in front of the sacristy, and tell us whether the lime is still there. In early summer, if it is, you will smell it before you see it.
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Berliner Vorstadt, Tiefer See
This oak has a theatre for a neighbour. It stands on the grounds of the Schiffbauergasse, Potsdam's cultural quarter on the shore of the Tiefer See, where the evening crowd comes for a play, a meal or the lakeside walk and can easily walk straight past a protected tree.
The register lists it as natural monument number 29, a pedunculate oak measured at 480 centimetres round. Nearly five metres of trunk puts it among the larger oaks the city protects, though well behind the thousand-year oak at Sacrow, which tapes 685. Nobody has recorded its age, and we have found no source that tries, so this page leaves the number empty rather than inventing one.
There is a second gap, and it matters more. The most recent dated picture we can find from this spot is from 2009, and it looks out over the lake rather than at the trunk. The oak is still on the register, but we cannot show you recent proof that it stands, and a register records what was protected, not what survived.
The grounds themselves are open to the public, so checking is easy: come for the lake or the theatre and look for the big oak on the way. If it is there, or if it is not, tell us. Either answer makes this page better.
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · Nauener Vorstadt / Jungfernsee
Three oaks share one entry in Potsdam's register, and the register will not tell you which is which. Natural monument number 19 is a trio of pedunculate oaks strung along about 150 metres of the Jungfernsee shore by the Bertinistrasse, with girths of 460, 515 and 590 centimetres and three separate coordinates. What it does not record is which girth belongs to which point.
That turns the biggest of them, close to six metres round, into a small puzzle for whoever comes to look: it is one of these three, and a tape measure is the only way to settle which. Our pin sits on the northernmost of the register's three points, which is why this page marks it as approximate. Walk the shore and all three stand along the same stretch.
They were photographed together in April 2025, so all three were standing then. Nobody has recorded an age for any of them, and we have not found a source that guesses.
One more honest note. The register puts them on three different land parcels, and we have not confirmed whether any of them stands behind a private fence. Look from the street and the shore path, and leave the gardens alone. If you can tell us which of the three is the 590, or roughly how old they are, please do.