New York City Guide: Barefoot in Central Park 🇺🇸 USA

Central Park plays an essential role in the everyday lives of New Yorkers by providing 341 hectares of paths, lakes and open spaces for escaping the din and chaos of the surrounding city. Visitors to New York City are often impressed with Central Park's beauty and size, which make it a wonderful place to enjoy a bit of relaxation and get a better sense of what it's like to live in New York City. Around 1849, a group of wealthy New Yorkers who admired the public grounds of London and Paris were led by merchant Robert Minton to begin advocating for the first landscape public park in the United States. They believed such a park in New York would give the city an international reputation, as well as offer their families an attractive setting for carriage rides. Central Park is a sports enthusiast's paradise, offering everything from baseball to croquet, rowboating to basketball. This is the place to enjoy the great outdoors, get fit and just relax. More than 20 million visitors come to Central Park each year. Central Park stretches out over a vast swath in the heart of Manhattan, surrounding visitors with historic sites, open fields and stunning natural scenery. The lake is the second largest of the nine man-made bodies of water in Central Park. Park designers created the lake from a former swamp to be used for boating in the summer and ice skating in the winter. It took 20 years and 20,000 workers to build the park. Workers sculpted the rock with explosives, planted four to five million trees and over 800 varieties of plants, drained swamps and dug the lakes. Among the historic sites of the park, Ladies' Pavilion, with its gray slate roof and charming cast iron details, is an important example of 19th century American decorative arts. A visit to the Ladies' Pavilion gives a visitor a sense of stepping back in time. In the spring, the area around Herd's Head is famous for its blooming flowers. Another attraction of the park is Belvedere Castle. Perched on Vista Rock, the second highest natural elevation in the park, it is perhaps the most magical monument in Central Park. One that combines function, form and romance, all in one convenient central location. Belvedere provides the best and highest views of the park and its cityscape, as befits a monument whose name translates to beautiful view in Italian. Besides offering breathtaking views, the castle also serves as a weather station. In fact, whenever you see a local news broadcast that gives the temperature in Central Park, the readings are taken at Belvedere Castle. It also serves as a Henry Luce Nature Observatory. The sculpture collection in New York City's parks constitutes the greatest outdoor public art museum in the United States. Some 1,200 monuments, 300 of which are sculptures, grace our most prominent civic spaces, as well as the many localities that together constitute the greater metropolis. Another curiosity in the park is the obelisk. Nicknamed Cleopatra's Needle, it is the oldest man-made object in Central Park. With four rectangular sides covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, the obelisk is designed to lead the viewer's eyes toward the sky. Tall and straight, it tapers off into a four-sided pyramid. Transferring the granite monument from Egypt to New York was an arduous and delicate process. Many of New York City's major monuments and attractions are America's iconic landmarks, the Statue of Liberty in Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Central Park. Every borough offers points of interest and places to explore. Paris has its lights, Rome its crooked alleys, London its misty Thames, but nowhere is as breathlessly romantic as New York City.