The Cypress of Piazza di Siena

Eighteen cypresses once ringed Piazza di Siena when the arena was laid out in 1789, part of the original hedge and tree enclosure designed by architect Antonio Asprucci for what is now Rome's international horse show. Seventeen of those eighteen are gone. This one, according to the conservation group Amici di Villa Borghese, is the sole survivor, still standing along the same oval perimeter the arena has kept since the eighteenth century. Rome's own municipal history of the piazza confirms the original planting scheme, a boxwood hedge, eighteen cypresses and two pine groves, without naming which tree is the last of the batch, so the survivor claim rests on the advocacy group's word rather than a dendrologist's ring count. What isn't in dispute is the arena itself: it has hosted the Concorso Ippico Internazionale, Rome's showjumping event, every year since 1922, riders and horses circling the same green oval a two centuries old cypress has watched from the sidelines the whole time. The letter naming this tree was written in 2024 because Villa Borghese was losing historic specimens faster than anyone wanted, including a well loved pine on the nearby Pincio that was felled around the same period. This cypress is what the campaign wanted people to notice before it went the same way.