The Aleppo Pine of Celimontana

Villa Celimontana keeps two of Rome's officially monumental trees within a few meters of each other, and this Aleppo pine is the more unusual of the pair. Pinus halepensis is a Mediterranean coastal species, more at home on the cliffs above Aleppo or along the Ligurian shore than on the Caelian Hill, and its presence here fits the exotic-planting habit of the Mattei family, who turned a vineyard into this garden starting in 1572. The tree stands along Viale Cardinale Francesco Spellman near the villa's main entrance at Piazza della Navicella, its twisting, wind-shaped canopy a contrast to the straighter cedar growing almost beside it. No source gives the pine a precise planting date, only the national registry's designation as monumental for its age, dimensions and form, so this account states it as undocumented rather than invent a number. What is certain is the company it has kept: Renaissance nobles, then the Italian Geographical Society, which held the villa from 1926, and now Sunday footballers on the grounds nearby, all under the same slanted pine.