What is Zurich's oldest tree?

One of the brown-tagged plane trees at Platzspitz park, planted in 1780 and dated using the city's own colour-coded tree tagging system.

Why did a bank fight to save a tree?

Julius Baer's Altstetten offices were built around a roughly 120-year-old giant sequoia on Hohlstrasse. When a new tram line threatened it around 2012, the bank negotiated for years rather than let the tree be felled, and won.

Who planted the Belvoirpark giant sequoia?

Alfred Escher, the railway pioneer and founder of what became Credit Suisse and ETH Zurich, planted it in 1858 to mark the birth of his daughter Lydia.

Are the Lindenhof lindens really 500 years old?

The tradition is. Lindens have been planted on Lindenhof since at least 1474, but a storm destroyed the historic stand in 1861, so most trees standing today date from the 1860s-1870s replanting, with one added in 1971 to mark Swiss women winning the vote.

Switzerland

Ancient Trees in Zurich

Zurich's oldest trees survive for reasons that have little to do with nature conservation: a park's own colour-coded planting tags date a 1780 plane tree to the year, a railway magnate planted a giant sequoia in 1858 to mark his daughter's birth, a private bank spent years negotiating with a tram line to keep a 120-year-old sequoia standing outside its offices, and a 550-year tradition of replanting lindens on the city's founding hilltop means the trees there today are honestly younger than the site's own reputation suggests.

The 1780 Planes of Platzspitz

London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · around 246 years · Altstadt

Platzspitz is Zurich's second-oldest public park, laid out on the wedge of land where the Sihl and Limmat rivers meet, and its own conservation survey has tagged its plane trees by planting year with a simple system of coloured markers: brown for 1780, blue for 1806, green for 1836, red for 1960, violet for 2005. The brown-tagged cohort, planted in 1780, includes at least one specimen the city's own gardeners describe as priceless, a tree that was already mature when Napoleon's armies crossed the Rhine, and the park itself has been rebuilt and replanted around it for two centuries since. Platzspitz's own history runs back roughly 450 years before that plane tree existed, documented in plans and drawings, though little from the earliest layouts survives above ground; the 1780 planes are themselves already part of that long rebuilding rather than an original feature. The tagging system means a visitor with sharp eyes and no guidebook can date individual trees just by checking the colour of the marker at the base, a small piece of park bureaucracy that turns Platzspitz's plane trees into a walkable timeline of Zurich civic gardening since the late 18th century.

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Alfred Escher's Giant Sequoia

Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) · over 165 years · Enge

Alfred Escher built modern Switzerland's railway network, founded the bank that became Credit Suisse and the institution now known as ETH Zurich, and by most accounts had almost no time left over for anything else. In 1858, he apparently made an exception: he planted this giant sequoia at Belvoirpark, his family's lakeside estate, to mark the birth of his only daughter, Lydia. The tree has since grown into the oldest confirmed giant sequoia in Zurich, well over 160 years old, a California native that tolerates Central European frost far better than its coastal redwood relatives and can, in its native range, live past 3,000 years, which makes even this Escher-era specimen a relative sapling by the standards of its own species. Belvoirpark itself began as Escher's grandfather's vineyard hillside, purchased in 1826 and planted with what were then exotic North American species around a new villa; the city of Zurich has owned the grounds since 1901, and what was once a private garden for one of the country's most powerful families is now a public park anyone can walk into and stand beneath a tree Escher planted for a child who would have been barely taller than it herself.

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The Lindens of Lindenhof

Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · 55-165 years, several planting generations · Altstadt

Zurich's history is often said to begin on this hilltop, a Roman customs post and later a Carolingian imperial palace, and lindens have been planted here continuously since at least 1474, when a chronicle records 52 trees going into the ground at once. None of those original trees survive; a severe storm in 1861 destroyed much of the historic stand, and an attempt to replace the lindens with other species was rejected by Zurich's own residents so firmly that the substitutes were dug up and replaced with lindens again within 15 years. Most of what grows on Lindenhof today dates from that 1860s-1870s replanting, making the oldest individual trees a little over 150 years old rather than the 500-plus years the site's own name and reputation imply. One tree breaks that pattern in a different direction: in 1971, the year Swiss women finally won the right to vote at the federal level, a new linden was planted here specifically to mark it. Lindenhof's real age is the age of the tradition of replanting it, not any single trunk standing today, a distinction this project tries to get right rather than smooth over for a better headline.

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The Mammutbaum of Hohlstrasse

Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) · around 120 years · Altstetten

This giant sequoia predates the seven-storey bank building that now looms over it by decades, and it nearly lost that seniority battle anyway. Around 2012, plans for the Limmattalbahn, a new tram line through Zurich's Altstetten district, threatened to require felling the roughly 120-year-old tree to make room for the widened road. Julius Baer, the private bank whose Altstetten offices had been built around the sequoia rather than the other way round, spent years in negotiation with the tram line's operators rather than accept the loss, eventually reaching a settlement in which the route was adjusted and the tree kept its ground. It stands today nearly 15 metres tall, close to the height of the building beside it, still growing on a stretch of Hohlstrasse that has since gone through a full redevelopment masterplan, approved by Zurich's city council in 2026, which explicitly names the sequoia as a feature to preserve rather than remove. A bank saving a tree from a tram line is not the story anyone would predict for one of Zurich's oldest giant sequoias, and it is not the kind of protection any nature reserve or heritage listing arranged. It happened because the people who owned the ground next to it decided the tree was worth the years of negotiation, which is its own kind of durability.

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Frequently asked

What is Zurich's oldest tree?: One of the brown-tagged plane trees at Platzspitz park, planted in 1780 and dated using the city's own colour-coded tree tagging system.
Why did a bank fight to save a tree?: Julius Baer's Altstetten offices were built around a roughly 120-year-old giant sequoia on Hohlstrasse. When a new tram line threatened it around 2012, the bank negotiated for years rather than let the tree be felled, and won.
Who planted the Belvoirpark giant sequoia?: Alfred Escher, the railway pioneer and founder of what became Credit Suisse and ETH Zurich, planted it in 1858 to mark the birth of his daughter Lydia.
Are the Lindenhof lindens really 500 years old?: The tradition is. Lindens have been planted on Lindenhof since at least 1474, but a storm destroyed the historic stand in 1861, so most trees standing today date from the 1860s-1870s replanting, with one added in 1971 to mark Swiss women winning the vote.
More on the oldest tree: What is the oldest tree in Zurich? The full answer, with map and directions.
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