Central Park: free audio guide
The story of Central Park in New York, as the Votura app tells it on location. Read it here, or hear it on the spot with turn-by-turn walking directions.
Before you go
- Address
- 59th to 110th St (btwn 5th Ave & Central Park W), New York, NY 10028
- Opening hours
- Mon–Sun: 6:00 AM–1:00 AM
The story
Central Park is New York City’s 843-acre masterpiece of urban landscape design, stretching about 2.5 miles from 59th Street to 110th Street and about 0.5 miles wide between Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux win the 1858 design competition with their Greensward Plan, and the park opens to the public in 1858 even though major construction continues for years afterward. It becomes the first landscaped public park built in the United States with such scale and intention, and its sweeping loops, meadows, bridges, and water features are meant to feel natural while being carefully engineered. The park is a rectangle in Manhattan, but it contains a remarkably varied world of lakes, lawns, woodlands, and rocky outcrops carved from the island’s existing bedrock.
What makes it especially fascinating is how much human history is embedded in the design itself. More than 20,000 workers, many of them Irish, German, and other immigrant laborers, help build it in the 1850s and 1860s, moving enormous amounts of rock and soil to shape the terrain. The park originally includes the 106-acre Reservoir, now the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, a major water-storage feature that opens in 1862 and remains one of the park’s most recognizable open spaces. Within the same landscape, the Ramble is laid out as a deliberately wild woodland, and the Mall is designed as a formal promenade leading to Bethesda Terrace, one of the park’s architectural showpieces. Bethesda Fountain, crowned by the Angel of the Waters sculpture by Emma Stebbins, is dedicated in 1873 and becomes one of the most photographed spots in the city.
Central Park also carries the drama of New York’s changing social life. The Central Park Zoo traces its origin to the 1864 menagerie, making it the city’s oldest zoo, and the park’s long history includes horse-drawn carriages, ice skating, carriage drives, and later a huge network of recreation space. Wollman Rink opens in 1950 and becomes a classic winter landmark, while the Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre lawn, once really holds grazing sheep before becoming a public open field. The park’s famous transverse roads, built to keep crosstown traffic moving below the landscape, are a reminder that this “park” is also a feat of city planning in one of the world’s busiest boroughs.
It keeps evolving through restoration as well as reinvention. Robert Moses, who dominates New York planning in the mid-20th century, pushes several changes that reshape parts of the park, and the Central Park Conservancy is founded in 1980 to restore and maintain it after years of neglect. The conservancy’s work helps revive landmarks such as the Bethesda Terrace arcade, the Conservatory Garden, and the Great Lawn, which is rebuilt and reopened in 1993 after a major restoration. Strawberry Fields, the memorial to John Lennon, opens in 1985 and includes the word “Imagine” in its tribute, drawing visitors to a quieter corner of the park’s west side. Today, the park remains both a daily escape for New Yorkers and a global stage, hosting concerts, races, film shoots, and countless landmark moments in the middle of Manhattan.
Written for the Votura audio tour and read aloud in the app. Opening hours change, so check with the venue before you go.
Self-guided tours that stop at Central Park
- Великолепный Нью-Йорк: 3-дневный автотур по главным достопримечательностям
- Нью-Йорк за 3 дня: Автомобильное путешествие по легендарным местам
- Нью-Йорк за 3 дня: легенды и знаковые места на колесах
- Нью-Йорк за 3 дня: все главные достопримечательности на машине
- Великолепие Нью-Йорка: 3-дневное автопутешествие по легендарным местам
- Нью-Йорк за 3 дня: легенды и лайфстайл на колёсах
More audio tours in New York →
Hear it on the spot
Votura plays this guide when you reach Central Park, then walks you to the next stop. Works offline.