The Koningin Emmaplein Beech

Fifteen grand townhouses built between 1888 and 1891 once earned this small square a joking nickname, Rijkeluishofje, the rich people's almshouse, a dig at how sheltered and comfortable its wealthy residents had it compared with the actual almshouses the word usually described. The copper beech at its centre went into the ground around the same years the houses went up, planted alongside a decorative 1890 urn designed by Hendrik Berlage, the architect who would later define much of Amsterdam's own cityscape. The neo-renaissance townhouses around the square housed Rotterdam's shipping elite, close enough to the harbour to manage their businesses and far enough from it to avoid the noise and smell, and the beech has stood at the centre of that arrangement for roughly 135 years, its trunk now 325 centimetres around. Copper beeches are planted for their colour, deep purple-red leaves that shift with the season and light rather than staying a uniform green, and this one has had over a century to fill out into the kind of specimen that makes an otherwise ordinary residential square worth a detour. It remains free and open, a short walk from the Westersingel and Parklaan trees on the same side of the city centre.