What is the oldest tree in Prague?
The oldest tree in Prague that anyone can actually go and see is the Beethoven Plane, a London plane growing in the garden of the Grand Priory Palace on Velkoprevorske namesti in Mala Strana, estimated at somewhere between 200 and 300 years old. Its exact planting date is disputed, but its trunk, seven and a half metres around, is the thickest of any protected tree in the city, and it towers over the wall where tourists photograph the Lennon Wall without ever looking up.
Prague has an older tree than this one, but nobody can visit it. Dub Karel, a 550 year old oak in a private castle park at Kolodeje, is Prague's oldest tree by a wide margin, and its own official record calls it the most massive tree in the city. The land is privately owned and closed to visitors, so per this site's rule on withheld locations it is left off the list rather than published as a destination nobody can reach. That leaves the Beethoven Plane as the oldest tree anyone can actually walk up to. It grows in the garden of the Grand Priory Palace, once the Prague seat of the Order of Malta, on Velkoprevorske namesti in Mala Strana, its trunk towering above the same wall famous today as the Lennon Wall. The romantic story, that a young Beethoven sat dreaming beneath it during his 1796 visit, does not survive contact with the calendar: he was in Prague in February, an unlikely month for garden reveries. Its real age is disputed among Czech sources, ranging from around 200 to nearly 300 years, but no other protected tree in the city comes close to its girth.
The yew, the oaks and their peers across other cities are collected in Europe's 10 Most Remarkable Ancient Trees.