Christmas Present: Nijmegen

[Jona Lendering]

I still want to add three maps.

And they are now online too: go here.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I think it just a seventeenth or eighteenth century garden; people liked to plant trees in patterns back then. Later, the site may have been abandoned, and new trees grew in the fields between the original 'rays'. The old pattern remains visible, as those trees were older, and therefore bigger. It is indeed the area where the aqueduct of the Hunerberg fort received its water, but no, I do not think it has something to do with that.

You are correct, these trees are planted by human and very likely an other species as the other trees. See the color difference.

Yes, that is what drew my attention to them.

[Robert]

I do not have access to very old maps at home (they are at the office), but would go with Jona and hazard a guess these trees were planted that way as part of a landscape park belonging to an old estate.
It was very fashionable at one time a century or more back to create star shaped lanes and patterns, as well as lines of sight and distinctive foliage essemblies. As no trees from the Roman era have survived (even oaks do not last 2000 years), it would be most strange if these were to represent a Roman structure.
The aquaduct is fully grown over, part of the Romanisation transition plan I recently presented to the director of the park involves removing them and restoring the aquaduct (as well as leveling Tell Arab hock: and replacing it with an indignius Iron age settlement as in Roman days).

My congradulations on a job well done, Jona, laudes awarded!