Imagine a tree that has lived for 2,000 years, a tree we can see and touch today and that was already here when the world as we know it today didn’t exist.  Such a tree, or actually, three of them, can be found in the Val d’Ultimo of South Tyrol, an enchanted valley near Merano in northern Italy, a traditional Tyrolean valley with ancient farms, green meadows, dense forests and high mountains.

The so-called ‘thousand-year-old larch trees’ are located in Santa Gertrude, the last village of Val d’Ultimo, at about 1,430 meters of altitude. How do we know these larch trees are so old? More than 2,000 growth rings were counted on a larch tree next to them that was knocked over by the wind in 1930. The three survivors, scarred by storms and bad weather, are thus considered the oldest conifers in Europe.