The Plane of Lucasbolwerk

This London plane was already forty years old, well established on the Lucasbolwerk, when Utrecht's city theatre went up facing it in 1941. The Stadsschouwburg, designed by the Dutch modernist architect Willem Dudok and opened that September, is the newer thing on this stretch of the old singel parkland by a wide margin: the municipal tree register dates the plane's own planting to around 1900, part of the general planting of Utrecht's 19th-century park ring rather than anything tied to the building that came decades later. Lucasbolwerk itself is one of the bastions of Utrecht's old city fortifications, absorbed into the landscaped singel park that rings the historic centre, the same project that gave the city Hieronymusplantsoen and the Zocherpark further along the water. The plane has spent well over a century watching that transformation from bastion to theatre forecourt, and now stands as the tree most people photograph the Stadsschouwburg's facade past without quite registering. It grows in the open on public parkland directly opposite the theatre entrance, free to see, no ticket needed even if the building behind it does require one.