On the crest of the hill that divides Grassina from Antella begins the park of Villa di Belmonte. At the panoramic viewpoint overlooking Florence, we find a giant holm with its splendid foliage of 23 meters, and a height of 11 meters.
The most characteristic part is no doubt the trunk which has a circumference of 5.50 meters and has undergone an action of torsion that results in the extended foliage somewhat out of sync by more than 90 degrees with respect to its roots. There is a possibility that it was not a single plant in the beginning but several united oaks, twisted and entangled together over the centuries, “as if a giant had grabbed it from above making it perform a quarter turn.” At its base is the heart of the plant where you could comfortably sit ten people when, until a few years ago, the place was the destination of choice for many families and their springtime picnics.
The dimensions evidence the age of this plant patriarch – more than 500 years old – which is considered one of the most beautiful of Tuscany and has been under study by arborists and botanists for years. Valid Capodarca wrote that “The holm oak is something fabulous, an exemplary anthology” and even the writer Maurizio Maggiani, who wanted to visit it in 1988, was fascinated and impressed by its “impossible lightness, with a gentle force, a placid immensity, an infinite maternity. This holm is a mother, the mother of every other holm and perhaps of all the other trees.”
In the villa park, there is also a huge cypress tree 25 meters high with a circumference of 5.20 meters which leads us to estimate an age of about 500 years. If it could talk, it would have a good story to tell.
A manuscript of Bindo Simone Peruzzi from 1741 states that “the villa belonged to the family de’ Barberini, and there was a cypress tree planted by the very hand of Pope Urban VIII, as is known by tradition.” Indeed, Maffeo Barberini – who became pope in 1623 – often frequented the villa of which he was owner until 1590. Given the size and age of the ancient cypress, you might think that it was planted by the hand of a future Pope, and has therefore, being “in the grace of God”, survived to this day.
Massimo Casprini
