The olive tree of Pisistratus, the oldest olive tree in the world, with a certified age of more than 2500 years, is located in a small park, lost among the blocks Agioi Anargyroi, an Athenian suburb, right behind the Orthodox cathedral of the same name.
The olive tree is just one of the tens of thousands of olive trees of the ancient olive grove of Pisistratus. Pisistratus was a politician of ancient Athens who ruled as a tyrant in three terms, 561 BC, 559-556 BC, 546-527 BC and 546-527 BC. Pisistratus was a populist tyrant who, in order to win the support of the citizens of Athens, initiated several public projects. One of them was the construction of a huge temple, dedicated to Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks, which is said to have been the largest in the Hellenic world and whose ruins can still be visited in the center of Athens. He then improved the organization of the sports activities of the Panathenaea, the greatest festival of ancient Athens, which took place in the city’s great stadium, which, after restoration, also hosted the first modern Olympic games. Overall, Pisistratus was a populist, but classical tyrant who followed the model so eloquently described decades later by the great Aristotle, namely that tyrannical regimes force citizens to work on grand projects so they can have no time or means to react in other issues.
But one of the most important projects was the planting of thousands and thousands of olive trees in the area of Attica around Athens, a rather arid region, with not so many trees. The aim was not just to “forest” the surroundings of Athens but also to help those who did not own land, a fact which placed them in a lower financial class when compared to those who owned agricultural land. And so, at the behest of Pisistratus, the landless citizens went out into the barren plains of Attica and planted tens of thousands of olive trees. It is estimated that their number went as high as 100,000. Their shoots had been detached from the sacred olive trees located at the foot of the Acropolis. The rights on the harvest were then shared among the citizens.
Repeated wars, natural catastrophes as well as the intense urbanization of the modern era made this olive trees “forest” around Athens disappear, the secular olive tree of Pisistratus remaining perhaps the only witness of its existence, from the moment of planting, 2500 years ago and to this day. The tree has “seen” both the Median Wars (Persian invasions of Ancient Greece), the countless civil wars among the Greeks, the Roman conquest, the Byzantine era, the Ottoman conquest, the Greek War of Independence in 1821, when much of the orchard was burned and destroyed by the Ottoman repression armies but also the first and especially the second world war, when parts of it were cut by the Nazi armies of occupation to be used as firewood.
In 1919, the Hellenic Archaeological Society discovered two remains of the olive grove created by the will and order of Pisistratus the tyrant. One was the Olive of Pisistratus, which they attested to be more than 2,500 years old, even older than the Parthenon. It is supposed to be the oldest olive tree in the world, although there are other olive trees in Greece with a venerable age, such as the olive tree on the island of Salamis, several decades younger, or the olive tree near the village of Kavousi in Crete, with a respectable age estimated at 3,250 years, that is, from the Minoan era. Also in Crete, in the village of Ano Vouves there is another ancient olive tree with an age of approximately 2500-5000 years being a monument visited by hundreds of tourists every year. But the age of this tree cannot be exactly determined. The method of radioactive isotopes cannot be applied, because due to the great age of the tree, the original trunk has disappeared.
In 1996, the Olive Tree of Pisistratus was declared a natural monument, being proven to be a part of the orchard of Pisistratus, of great botanical, aesthetic and historical importance, being maintained and preserved by scientists and specialized gardeners.
The olive tree of Pisistratus goes unnoticed among the historical and touristic sights that the millennial history of Athens generously offers us, but when the traveler gets in front of this stunning monument of nature, he cannot but be surprised and admire the resilience and survival stamina of this olive tree which even after thousands of years still manages to bear fruit.