Regensburg protects its trees one at a time, by number, and the result is a set of city-centre trees rather than country giants. A plane in the Herzogspark shares its lawn with a medieval gate tower, another holds a street corner in Prebrunn, and a third grows on a market place the Romans laid out around 175 AD. Over the Steinerne Bruecke, the oldest stone bridge in Germany, two protected chestnut groups stand a few doors apart on the same Stadtamhof street. All five are free, and the whole set is one afternoon on foot.
0 of 5 visited in Regensburg
1
The Herzogspark Plane
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 200 years · Herzogspark (Prebrunn), Altstadt
This plane shares a lawn with a medieval gate tower and is the newcomer of the two by centuries. The Prebrunnturm anchors the northwestern corner of Regensburg's old town, and the ground under both tree and tower was a bastion in the city wall long before anything was planted on it.
The garden came in 1804, laid out privately for Georg Friedrich von Mueller on the site of that old bastion. The Thurn und Taxis family took it over in 1843, the city bought it in 1935, and it opened to the public between 1950 and 1952 as the Herzogspark.
Where the plane fits into that sequence is not recorded anywhere. The only age anyone has published is roughly 200 years, and it comes from a photographer's caption written on site in 2022 rather than from a survey or a ring count, so treat it as one person's estimate. Nothing links this particular tree to the original 1804 planting either. The park's founding date and the tree's age are two separate facts.
What is documented is the protection. It is number 10 on the city's own list of natural monuments, one of a small group of Regensburg trees designated individually rather than as part of a landscape. If you know when it went into the ground, tell us.
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2
The Chestnuts of Am Gries
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · not documented; mature specimens, one in visible decline as of 2022 · Stadtamhof
One of these chestnuts is dying, and the most recent public look at them was taken four years ago. The photographer who recorded the group on 29 August 2022 captioned the picture with the dying chestnut in the foreground, which remains the only statement anyone has published about their condition. The rest of the group was standing.
Two separate authorities protect them, which is unusual for a row of street trees. Regensburg's own natural monument ordinance lists them as number 52, the Kastanien Am Gries, designated on 28 March 1996. Bavaria's state register carries the same group independently as ND-03369. Between them they establish the species, the position and the protected status. Neither records an age, which is true of almost every tree on this page.
They stand on Am Gries in Stadtamhof, on the far bank of the Danube, about five minutes on foot from the end of the Steinerne Bruecke. That crossing is the reason to do these two chestnut entries together with the old town ones rather than on another day.
Standing in front of them, the group's condition is the thing you will read first. If the failing chestnut has gone since 2022, or if the others have caught up with it, tell us.
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3
The Chestnuts of the Golden Lion
Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) · not documented · Stadtamhof
The protection here covers one horse chestnut and a torso. That is the register's own wording: entry number 53 on Regensburg's natural monument list, granted on 11 June 1997, protects a single standing chestnut plus what is left of a second, which is a good deal less than the plural in its name suggests.
The name belongs to the building rather than the trees. Zum Goldenen Loewen, the Golden Lion, was an inn on this plot at Am Gries 30, and the chestnut kept the name after the inn stopped trading.
It stands a few doors along from the Kastanien Am Gries, and the two are genuinely separate designations made a year apart under different numbers, not one group counted twice. On the ground the difference is easy: a cluster of trunks outside number 18, a single crown and the remains of its neighbour outside number 30.
Nobody has dated either of them. One city ordinance from 1997 and a photograph from August 2022 are the entire documented record for this tree, and the photograph is also the last confirmation that it is standing. If you know the planting year, or you have five minutes and a tape measure, tell us.
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4
The Plane of the Old Corn Market
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · not documented · Altstadt (old town, UNESCO World Heritage site)
This plane grows on a market place the Romans laid out around 175 AD. The Alter Kornmarkt is a nearly square open space in the heart of the UNESCO-listed old town, ringed by the Herzogshof, the Roemerturm and the Carmelite monastery, and it has stayed trading ground for most of the time since: a vegetable market still takes it over on Saturday mornings.
The tree is number 34 on the city's list of natural monuments, entered simply as a plane at the Alter Kornmarkt. That entry gives no house number and no coordinate. The square's own description mentions a row of trees along the south side that partly hides the freestanding bell tower of the Alte Kapelle, which is the likeliest place to start looking, though no source actually places this tree in that row. The pin here marks the square rather than a trunk, so expect to spend a minute working out which crown you have come for.
A photograph taken on 11 August 2024 shows it standing. No age has ever been recorded for it, which is ordinary for a tree the city protects by street name and nothing else. If you can date it, or point at the exact trunk, tell us.
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5
The Plane at Singrün Corner
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · not documented · Prebrunn, Altstadt
The entry that protects this tree gives no address, only a corner. Number 43 on Regensburg's list of natural monuments is a plane at the corner of Prebrunnstrasse and Am Singrün, and that is the whole of the location anyone has published: no house number, no coordinate, and no GPS tag on the photograph of it either. The pin here marks the corner, which will get you to the right junction and not to the exact trunk.
London planes went into European streets by the thousand for their tolerance of compacted soil and city air, and almost all of them stay anonymous. This one is on the protected list, in Prebrunn on the western edge of the old town, a five minute walk from the plane in the Herzogspark. That proximity makes the two of them a single stop rather than two, which is worth knowing before you plan the afternoon.
The most recent photograph of it was taken on 15 September 2024, which makes this the best confirmed of the five trees here: the others were last recorded in 2022 or 2024. Nobody has dated it, and nobody has put a tape around it. If you can do either, tell us.
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