Ruta Fox

USA TODAY 10Best

Manhattan's beloved Central Park is enjoyed by countless residents and tourists each year. Whether picnicking in summer, viewing fall foliage, ice skating in winter or enjoying spring's bloom, visitors to Central Park find something extraordinary to do all year round. Here are a few surprises you might not know about this iconic American haven designed by the late, extraordinary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted:

1. Central Park is entirely man-made

All the lakes and ponds in Central Park contain water no different from your kitchen sink or bathtub - it can be turned on and off. Landscape architects Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park in 1857 as a way to improve public health and water features were a key component.

Related:Free things to do in New York

2. It's bigger than Monaco

Central Park was the first public landscaped park in America and is the most frequently visited urban park in the United States: there are 40 million visits to Central Park a year. Many residents visit more than once a day. There's certainly room for all the park's fans: this amazing urban green space is larger than the entire principality of Monaco.

3. There's a secret code



All the lampposts in the park are numbered. It's kind of a code, and allows you to figure out where you are. The first two digits are the cross street and the second two digits let you know if you are closer to the East Side or the West Side.

4. Central Park costs $58 million dollars per year to maintain

The funds to care for the park are primarily given by New Yorkers through donations to the Central Park Conservancy, which funds 75% of the $58 million annual budget to keep the park beautiful. This process serves as an inspiration to other communities to support their parks.

5. Central Park has its own app

The Central Park app is a free guide to over 200 things to see and do. The app has an audio guide featuring celebrity-voiced tours to 41 specific spots around the park. Yoko Ono gives a tour of Strawberry Fields and John McEnroe will inform you about the tennis courts.

6. There are 9,000 park benches and 19,500 trees over 6 inches wide

To maintain the park, it's been divided into 49 zones, each with a specific gardener. There are around 9,000 park benches, 3,000 of which have been adopted for around $7,500 each, through the Adopt-A-Bench program. A small, personalized plaque installed by the Conservancy graces each donor's bench.

7. There are 51 sculptures to see in Central Park

The Literary Walk treats strollers to 3D representations of William Shakespeare, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Other famous statues throughout the park include Hans Christian Anderson, Beethoven, Daniel Webster, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Morse and a single dog: Balto. The Bethesda Fountain was the first sculpture by a woman commissioned in New York City.

8. Travel the world without a passport

The Obelisk, also known as Cleopatra's Needle, is a 3,000-year-old Egyptian ruin weighing 220 tons and standing 66 feet high. There's also a scaled-down English castle called the Belvedere, and a Swedish Cottage that houses the marionette theater. Visitors will even find authentic Venetian gondolas in the park.

9. Central Park is a gated community

There are 19 main park exterior openings called gates. Vaux and Olmsted gave them names like the Inventors' Gate, the Scholars' Gate, the Mariners' Gate, the Artisans' Gate, and so on. There's only one gate named for a specific person: the Vanderbilt Gate at Fifth Avenue and East 106th Street, where the gorgeous black wrought iron gates from the old Vanderbilt Mansion (now a Bergdorf Goodman store) are mounted.

10. Central Park is safe at night – on New Year's Eve.

Wrap up the year right by celebrating New Year's Eve in Central Park. Start the party at the Bandshell at 10 pm, move onto the costume party parade at 11 pm, then join the Road Runners Club "Emerald Nuts" four-mile run, which starts at the Bethesda Fountain. Both the run and the spectacular fireworks display go off at midnight.

Visit www.centralparknyc.org to explore more.