The Plane Tree of the Ile de Peilz

Lake Geneva has exactly one natural island, it is roughly the size of a large living room, and the single tree standing on it is one you are not allowed to reach. The Ile de Peilz is a rock off Villeneuve that local people built up with earth, by tradition in 1797. Three plane trees went in in 1851. By 1970 one plane and an ailing horse chestnut were left; the chestnut has since died, and the plane now stands alone at roughly 175 years old, filling its entire island. A certified arborist assessed it in 2023 and found it generally healthy, with some decay present but nothing that stops it working. It was famous before anyone photographed it. Byron wrote the islet into The Prisoner of Chillon in 1816, before the trees existed. Hans Christian Andersen put it in The Ice-Maiden in 1861, when they were ten years old. Since around 2021 it has become one of the most photographed objects on the lake. You look rather than visit. Both sources are explicit that the islet cannot be landed on and that a boat risks running aground trying. The view is from the public quays at Villeneuve, and our pin marks that shoreline rather than the tree. Go at either end of the day, when the plane turns to a silhouette against open water.