In the outskirts of Capannori, a quaint village in the Tuscan countryside not far from Lucca, in the beautiful park surrounding Villa Carrara, there is a 600 years old oak, so famous and so distinctive that it is officially recognized as a national landmark by the Italian Government and it even appears as a reference on NATO maps.
This ancient, majestic exemplar of quercus robur, or common oak, is legendarily known as the Quercia delle Streghe: the Witches’ Oak. With its almost 50 feet in height, a trunk of about 13 feet in diameter and, most astonishingly, a crown of more than 130 feet, this incredible tree is the second in size in the whole of Tuscany. The fact its branches developed in width rather than in height is at the origins of its name: indeed, old tales say that the peculiar shape of the tree is due to how, in the old days, witches used to dance atop its branches, causing them to squat and develop horizontally rather than vertically.
The Witches’ Oak is famous in the literary world for one very special reason: it’s believed to have inspired — and to be part of — one of Italy’s most famous novels, Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi. Legends say that Collodi had the habit, while writing his masterpiece, to sit under it and seek inspiration, and that he payed tribute to the tree by making it part of some of the novel’s most famous scenes, namely, when Pinocchio meets the Cat and the Fox and, then, when he gets into troubles with a couple of evil assassins. The oak is also at the center of one of the Blue Fairy’s most spectacular interventions, when she saves poor Pinocchio from an untimely death by hanging from the old oak’s very branches. For all these reasons, the tree is also known as the Quercia di Pinocchio, or “Pinocchio’s oak.”
There are also some geographical hints to show the oak in Pinocchio is the Witches’ Oak. The tree is on the way joining Collodi — the birthplace of Carlo’s mother — and Lucca, by many believed to be the inspiration for the famous paese dei balocchi (or Candy Land) of the novel. More precisely, Collodi (the writer) may have had in mind the famous Settembre Lucchese, when the city is animated by food fairs and events, a well established tradition, popular already in his times. In the novel, it is quite clear that Pinocchio “meets” the oak when on his way to the Paese dei Balocchi, or, if we follow the theory above mentioned, to Lucca, thus reinforcing the idea that the old tree in the novel is, indeed, the witches’ tree.
But the Quercia delle Streghe hasn’t only got an interesting literary history, its day to day real life has been quite eventful, too. Nowadays, the multi-centennial tree is in good health, but it’s gone through some vicissitudes. In the early 20th century, some of his branches were broken by a gang of hooligans who had decided to sit on them. Later on, during World War Two, the Nazis wanted to use it as firewood, a project stopped thanks to the courage and will power of the inhabitants of the small village of San Martino in Colle.
In the 1960s, the tree was hit by thunder and suffered large-scale harm and, in even more recent years, the many tourists walking around it have caused severe damage to its majestic but fragile roots. There’ s even been an insect infestation inside its trunk. Yet, the Witches’ Oak remains strong and magic.
The oak, symbol of power, resilience and of the ancestral ties between Humankind and Nature, is an alluring and legendary tree, one that is respected and often associated, all over the world, with wisdom. Capannori’s Witches’ Oak went a step further and became also synonym with one of the most famous pieces of Italian and children literature in the world. Geppetto couldn’t use its wood to make Pinocchio, though: the log Mastro Ciliegia gave him — from which old Geppetto created his puppet-child — came, in fact, from a cherry tree.
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