The Plane of the Fontana dei Dodici Mesi

Forty metres, and nothing in Turin is taller. This plane stands beside the Fontana dei Dodici Mesi at the southern end of Parco del Valentino, and it clears the second tallest tree on the city's monumental register by four full metres. The fountain would be worth the walk on its own. Carlo Ceppi built it in 1898 for the Esposizione Generale Italiana, a great oval basin ringed by twelve statues, one for each month, with four more for the rivers of the Turin plain. The tree is older than the fountain. The register puts it past two hundred years, five and a half metres round, with a crown thirty-two metres across, the widest canopy it records anywhere in the city. Forty metres is a serious height for a plane growing outside a forest, and it happens here for the same reason the fountain does: the Po is a couple of hundred metres away and the water table under this end of the park never really drops. Come late in the afternoon, when the light comes up the river from the west and the statues are lit from behind. It is the last stop, and the tram back to Porta Nuova runs from Corso Massimo d'Azeglio.