The hollow in this oak is big enough that people compare it to a small cave, and a village story from the Second World War says a sniper once hid inside it to cover the crossing of the Dniester. The tree is reckoned at over a thousand years old, and in 2010 Ukraine's national Tree of Ukraine contest named it the oldest tree in the Lviv region. It is a pedunculate oak, 8.5 metres round and about eighteen metres tall, growing beside the Church of St Michael the Archangel in the village of Veryn. It has been a place to stop for a long time. Tradition says Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky rested in its shade. What is more than tradition is a set of photographs from 1917 showing soldiers of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen standing beside it, later printed as a postcard, so it was already worth posing beside more than a century ago. The hollow is also its weakness. Rot inside the trunk is a documented, ongoing concern, and it is part of what age looks like on an oak this size. The tree is still alive. It has been a protected botanical monument since 1984, and in 2024 it placed eighth in European Tree of the Year with 8,886 votes. There is no fence. An informal path has worn its way to the trunk, which tells you how many people have made the same walk.
By the Church of St Michael the Archangel, Veryn village, Stryi district, Lviv region, Ukraine You can recognise it by the trunk, 8.5 metres round with a cavity large enough to be compared to a small cave. It stands unfenced by the Church of St Michael the Archangel in Veryn.
Free, on the grounds of the village church of St Michael; the local monument is explicitly unfenced (per localhistory.org.ua) and there is a well-documented informal path for visitors, so this is open village ground, not a private site.
Rural village in Stryi district, Lviv region, western Ukraine; no rail or public transport directly to the tree, reached by road from Stryi (roughly 15km) or Lviv (roughly 70km).