The Chestnut Avenue of the Hauptallee

Vienna's grandest avenue is older than the trees that define it by two centuries. The Hauptallee was cut through the Prater's floodplain forest in 1538, on the order of Emperor Ferdinand I, to connect the Augarten with the imperial hunting grounds, but the horse chestnuts that now line it in four to six dense rows came generations later. The oldest survivors are 236 and 266 years old, meaning they went into the ground around the time Mozart was still alive. Roughly 2,600 avenue trees run along the full 4.5 kilometre length, from Praterstern at one end to the Lusthaus, a former imperial hunting lodge, at the other, making this one of the longest tree-lined avenues in Europe. For a few weeks each spring the chestnuts turn the entire route white with candle-shaped blossom, an event Viennese joggers and cyclists plan routes around rather than merely notice. The avenue has hosted horse races, carriage parades, and, for decades, the finish straight of the Vienna City Marathon. Not every tree on the Hauptallee is old. Storms, disease, and simple traffic have taken their share over five centuries, and new chestnuts are replanted as older ones fail. The two oldest survivors are the exception, not the rule, which is exactly what makes them worth seeking out.