The Cedar of San Lazzaro degli Armeni

An Armenian monk fleeing the Ottoman conquest of his hometown turned a derelict leper-hospital island into one of Europe's least likely botanical collections, and the cedar growing there today is a direct result. Mechitar of Sebaste, forced out of Modone in 1715, was granted the abandoned island in 1717 and spent the following decades rebuilding it as a monastery and library for the Mekhitarist Armenian Catholic order, work finished around 1740. The garden he and his monks planted mixes a Cedar of Lebanon with Aleppo pines bent low by lagoon winds, a Canary Island palm, and roses grown for centuries to make vartanush, a rose petal jam still produced by the monks today. Sources describe the cedar only as centuries-old, without a specific planting date, so its exact age is unverified, but it has grown in a garden that has been continuously tended by the same religious order since the 18th century, a continuity almost nowhere else on this list can claim. The island also holds a khachkar, a 13th-century Armenian stone cross gifted by Armenia to mark the community's ties to Venice.