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.
Aleppo Pine
An Aleppo pine keeps its cones locked shut on the branch for years and opens them with heat, so the fire that kills the tree sows the next generation of it. This page maps every aleppo pine on the site, 7 so far across 7 cities.
That trick is why a nineteenth century engineer bet a whole hillside on the species. When Nice became French in 1860 the slopes of Mont Boron were bare rock, and the replanting begun in 1862 is the pine forest you walk through today. The other four are city trees. Rome's grows in the Villa Celimontana, one of two officially monumental trees standing within a few metres of each other. Madrid's, about 150 years old, is in the Campo del Moro under the west front of the Royal Palace. Barcelona's, at about 122, is in the Torre Girona gardens, and Florence's stands on Via Giramondino. Five cities, all of them Mediterranean, which for this pine is simply home.
Rome
Barcelona
Aleppo pines are the trees that come back after fire, their cones prised open by the heat, colonising burnt Mediterranean hillsides faster than anything else growing on them.
Florence
An Aleppo pine keeps its cones sealed on the branch for years and opens them with heat, so the fire that kills the tree sows the next generation.
Madrid
This pine grows in the gardens spread beneath the Royal Palace's western facade, a formal landscape that took its current shape only in the 1890s even though the land had belonged to the crown for...
Cagliari
Two Aleppo pines stand at the doorstep of one of Sardinia's most important Romanesque churches, in the small town of Dolianova, about 23 minutes from Cagliari by regional train.
Nice
This entire forest exists because a 19th century engineer refused to give up on bare rock.
Bari
A branch on this Aleppo pine broke off in a heavy snowfall about two decades ago, and Bari's foresters simply cut the stump flush and left the rest standing, close to six metres round at the trunk.
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