The Great Plane of Parc du Contades

Alsace's regional register dates this plane to the 1730s, which would make it older than the park it stands in. The Parc du Contades was laid out from 1764 as a promenade for the Marshal de Contades, then military governor of Alsace, and it is Strasbourg's oldest public park. If the register is right, the tree was already thirty years old when the first paths were drawn around it. That date comes from the Collectivite europeenne d'Alsace, a body entirely separate from the city's own remarkable-tree list, which is what gives it weight. Its page could not be read directly, only through a search extract, so treat the 1730s as a strong claim rather than a settled one. The height is disputed in the ordinary way. The city says 40 metres. Other listings say 43, and one says nearly 45. Take 40 and upwards, and accept that nobody has recently gone up it with a tape. On the register's dating, this tree stood through the creation of the park around it, the Revolution that turned a marshal's promenade into public ground, the German annexation of 1871 that built the Neustadt right up against it, and two wars in which the city changed hands. It sits at the centre of the park and cannot be walked past without noticing.