Trees of Roma

Rome, at least near the centre, is a green city.  There are amazing gardens and courtyards that at as oases of calm from the tourist throng.  They are also deliciously cool amidst the searing heat of this years’ summer heat wave.

I photographed this ‘Orange Garden’ at dawn near the top of the Aventine Hill.  You can see St Peters’ duomo and the Vatican City in the distance.  The main trees along the path are Rome’s characteristic “Umbrella Pines” (Pinus pinea), imported from Greece and favoured for their large seeds (“pine nuts”) [Source] – there is Extra Photo from under one acting as a sun umbrella in the current heatwave.  The walled garden of the feature photo is part of the adjacent Basilica and has a series of Orange trees planted by the nuns or priests.  Rome’s hills each had their own sacred grove and protective priest; cutting down trees carried a possible death sentence.

There is an urban ecology restoration story here. With the gradual destruction of the aqueducts after the fall of the empire, Rome’s extensive treed areas dried up. Greenery remained scarce up to the 18th century when Grand Tourists lamented the dustiness of the city’s streets, the treeless roads instead of verdant avenues. So replanting began [Source].

In Fascist times, the authorities saw pines as a symbol of “Italianità”. At Christmas 1937, Mussolini planted one in Piazza Venezia, the first in a row of 2,000 stretching from the Forum to what is now the southern EUR suburb, centre of what should have been Italy’s showpiece 1942 Esposizione Universale di Roma.

The pines’ natural 180-year lifespan is halved in Rome, in part because of the asphalt undermining root health, so they tend to topple. Some 82,000 trees in Rome sport a numbered tag so they can be monitored by the city's gardens authority.

The River Tiber gently snakes through the city (see ‘Extra Photos’). In many places it is lined with plane trees (Platanus sp.).  About 15,000 planes reduce decibels from traffic by up to 30 per cent. They also lower temperatures and absorb ever-rising rates of pollution. Levels of lead in leaves near traffic have been found to be 20-80 times higher than in their rural counterparts.