In this garden stands a fig tree whose trunk measures more than twenty-one metres round, some thirty metres tall, with a canopy fifty metres across. It is reckoned the largest tree in Europe. Trees of that size usually stand in a forest or a botanical garden: this one is in the middle of a city square, where people walk their dogs.
What to see
The garden was laid out between 1861 and 1864 by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile inside piazza Marina, in the Kalsa quarter, and dedicated to Giuseppe Garibaldi to celebrate the newly born Italian state. The entrances line up with the main streets converging on the square, and the whole perimeter is closed by a cast-iron railing of the same date, made by the Oretea foundry.
Besides the fig there are several rarities: a Himalayan podocarp, a Mexican oak that is very hard to find, an imposing South African tree gardenia. In spring the flowerings follow one another, purple and strongly scented, then yellow, orange and white. Inside the garden there is also a series of busts of the men of eighteen-sixty: Garibaldi, Enrico Albanese, Giuseppe La Masa, Rosolino Pilo, Francesco Riso, Giovanni Corrao, Raffaele De Benedetto, Luigi Tukory and Nicola Bălcescu. The Tukory bust was stolen in 2015 and recovered soon afterwards. Recent excavations have brought to light part of an old cobbled pavement.
Visiting
The garden is inside piazza Marina, in the Kalsa, near the Cala. It is public and free, but fenced, so it has opening and closing times that change with the season. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Read the names on the busts one after another. Among the Sicilian patriots you will find two who are not Sicilian at all: Luigi Tukory was Hungarian and died at Palermo fighting with Garibaldi, Nicola Bălcescu was a Romanian revolutionary who ended his days in this city. The Risorgimento was also an international trade, and this garden says so without a sign to explain it.