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.
catkins hang before the leaves are fully outacorns drop, and a good mast year buries the ground in themAutumn colour
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Schlosspark Sacrow, Krampnitzer Strasse 33, 14469 PotsdamYou can recognise it by the trunk, 6.85 metres round, thicker than the two protected oaks a short walk away on the Krampnitzer Strasse. It stands in the Schlosspark Sacrow, by the Havel.
Free. Stands in the Schlosspark Sacrow, a public landscape park by the Havel (Lenne design); open in daylight.
By bus from central Potsdam to Sacrow, then on foot through the Schlosspark Sacrow to the oak.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.