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Building super-eruptive magma reservoirs in the cold, upper parts of Earth’s crust requires a significant influx of magma over an extended period, sufficient to allow the magma to accumulate, differentiate and periodically erupt. Some models favour magma storage in a cold non-eruptible state, requiring extensive reactivation of the reservoirs before eruption, whereas others suggest storage at higher temperature and lower crystallinity, implying that magma in such reservoirs is readily eruptible. Consequently, constraining volcanic hazards requires observations directly linking magma residence timescales to the thermal state and crystallinity of storage. Here we simultaneously determine crystallization temperatures and ages of magmatic crystals of zircon and titanite in the 900 km³ Kneeling Nun Tuff (New Mexico, USA), which allows us to place tight constraints on the long-term thermal evolution of the magma …