The Oud Eik en Duin Chestnut

A ruined medieval chapel stands a few steps from this chestnut and is six centuries older than anything else growing on the site. Oud Eik en Duin opened as a cemetery in 1830, after a royal decree ended the practice of burying the dead inside Dutch churches and pushed new burial grounds out past the edge of town. The ground it took was already old. The chapel of Eik en Duinen, founded in the 13th century and a pilgrimage spot for centuries after, sits roofless in the middle of it, wrecked in the wars of the 16th century and left standing as a ruin ever since. The register dates this horse chestnut to the 1830s, the same decade the cemetery opened, though nobody recorded whether it belongs to the first planting or arrived some years later. Either way it has spent close to two centuries doing what cemetery trees do, growing undisturbed on land nobody is permitted to develop, which is the best thing that can happen to a tree in a city. Oud Eik en Duin is one of the largest and oldest burial grounds in The Hague, it is free, and it is open to walk through in daylight.