Imported Architecture

In January 1881, a nearly 70-ft.-tall Egyptian obelisk was erected in the park directly behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The roughly 200-ton shaft is Central Park's oldest man-made object. The obelisk traces its origins to the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, where it was constructed in the 16th century B.C. before being moved to Alexandria by Roman Emperor Augustus roughly 1,500 years later.