What is the oldest tree in Trieste?

The London plane at the Boschetto roundabout on Viale al Cacciatore, which the city puts at over 200 years. It is older than the Giardino Pubblico and older than the Miramare park, both of which were planted in the 1850s.

Can you walk between them?

In seven walks, not one. Six stand inside three hundred metres of each other in the Miramare park, eight kilometres up the coast: four conifers and, along the same paths, a holm oak and an Aleppo pine. Four more are spread along about a kilometre from the Giardino Pubblico up Via Giulia to the Boschetto roundabout. A hackberry in Piazza Hortis, an elm in the Piazzale Rosmini garden, a second elm at the Civico Museo Sartorio and a second hackberry up on the cathedral hill of San Giusto stand across Citta Vecchia, San Vito and San Giusto. Two Aleppo pines share the hillside park at Villa Revoltella. A Turkey oak stands alone over a sinkhole in the Percedol nature reserve on the karst plateau. A horse chestnut stands alone at Opicina, a tram ride from the centre. And a maple and a lime, a few hundred metres apart, stand in and beside the village of Basovizza near the Slovenian border.

Do they cost anything to see?

No. The Miramare park is free and open daily, and the castle inside it is the only part you pay for. The Giardino Pubblico is a free public park and the Boschetto plane stands on a public street.

Why are there Californian trees at Miramare?

Because Maximilian treated the park as an experiment. He wanted to know which foreign species would survive on bare Adriatic limestone, and within ten years the garden had cedars from Lebanon, North Africa and the Himalaya, cypresses from California and Mexico, and the redwoods that are still the tallest things in it.

What is the Foiba di Basovizza?

Italy's National Monument to the victims of the foibe, a disused mine shaft used in May 1945 for the execution of Italian civilians and soldiers by occupying Yugoslav troops, and the principal memorial for families of the deported. The grounds are free and open every day. A Montpellier maple that was already over a century old that spring still grows on the site.

Italy

Ancient Trees in Trieste

20 trees on the map

Trieste holds Italy's densest cluster of registered monumental trees, 48 by the city's own count. Six stand within three hundred metres in the park an archduke planted on a limestone headland, testing conifers from California and a holm oak from the Mediterranean. Four more grow in a public garden a botanist mayor planted himself. Four, two bagolari and two elms, stand across the old city and the hill of San Giusto. The rest stand alone or in pairs: Aleppo pines on a hillside, a sinkhole oak on the karst, a chestnut at Opicina, a maple and a lime at Basovizza.

The Redwood of Miramare

Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) · about 170 years, planted after 1856 · Grignano

The man who planted this tree was shot by a firing squad in Mexico eleven years later. Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg began the Miramare park in the spring of 1856 on a limestone headland with almost no soil on it, and he treated the whole thing as an experiment: he wanted to find out which foreign species would hold on to bare Adriatic rock. Soil was carted in. Within ten years the garden had cedars from Lebanon, North Africa and the Himalaya, firs from Spain, cypresses from California and Mexico, and this coast redwood from the fog belt of northern California. Maximilian kept ordering plants for it after he sailed for Mexico to be crowned emperor, and he never came back. The redwood took. It is now 4.25 metres round the trunk and thirty metres tall, the largest of the two redwoods here and one of twelve protected trees standing within three hundred metres of each other. Put a hand on it. The bark is soft, dry and fibrous rather than hard, and on old trees it goes thirty centimetres deep, which is what lets a redwood walk out of a fire that kills everything around it. This one is a child by the standards of its species, which passes 115 metres at home.