This guide follows six landmarks on a line from the south of Central Park up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the statue of Balto the sled dog, the Christopher Columbus statue at the foot of the Mall, Bethesda Terrace and its fountain, the Alice in Wonderland sculpture, Belvedere Castle and the Egyptian obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle. Each one is a stop on our Central Park scavenger hunt, and together they span three and a half thousand years, from a pharaoh's obelisk to a bronze Alice made in 1959.
Balto
The bronze statue of a husky on a rock near the Tisch Children's Zoo honours the sled dogs of the 1925 serum run. That winter a diphtheria outbreak threatened the town of Nome in Alaska, and relays of dog teams carried antitoxin there from Nenana; Balto led the team that ran the final leg. The sculptor Frederick Roth used Balto as his model, and the dog himself was present when the statue was unveiled on 17 December 1925, only about ten months after the run.
- The slate plaque in front of the statue, with a relief of a sled team and an inscription dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs, ending with the words endurance, fidelity, intelligence.
Christopher Columbus statue
At the southern end of the Mall stands a bronze Columbus by the Spanish sculptor Jerónimo Suñol, signed J. SUÑOL and cast by the Masriera foundry in Barcelona in 1892. It was given to the city by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, and it repeats the statue Suñol made for the Plaza de Colón in Madrid. It was unveiled here on 12 May 1894. Like other Columbus monuments it has become a focus of protest and was vandalised with paint in 2017 and again in 2023.
- The foundry mark on the bronze, naming Federico Masriera of Barcelona and the year 1892.
Bethesda Terrace and Fountain
Bethesda Terrace was part of the 1858 Greensward Plan by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who called it the Water Terrace. Vaux designed the architecture and Jacob Wrey Mould the carved details, and the work dragged on through the 1860s; the fountain was completed in 1873. Two grand staircases lead down from the end of the Mall to the lower terrace by the Lake, passing through an arcade under the road.
The statue on top of the fountain, the Angel of the Waters, was designed in 1868 by Emma Stebbins, the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City. It refers to the angel who healed the waters of the Pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John, and at the same time to the Croton Aqueduct, which brought clean water to the city from 1842.
- The ceiling of the arcade, covered with around 14,000 Minton encaustic tiles designed by Mould, restored and put back in 2007.
- The carved stone balustrades along the staircases, also designed by Mould.
Alice in Wonderland
On the north side of Conservatory Water, the model-boat pond near East 74th Street, sits the bronze Alice in Wonderland by the sculptor José de Creeft, made in 1959. The publisher George Delacorte paid for it and dedicated it to his wife Margarita, whose name appears at the base. Alice is surrounded by the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat and other characters from Lewis Carroll's book.
- Lines from Carroll's nonsense poem Jabberwocky engraved around the base.
- The plaques showing scenes from the book that were Margarita Delacorte's favourites.
Belvedere Castle
Belvedere Castle was designed in 1867 by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould as a viewpoint folly, a small castle that serves no defensive purpose at all. It stands on Vista Rock, an outcrop of schist about 40 metres high and the second-highest natural point in the park. Its name comes from the Italian for beautiful view, and from its terraces you look over Turtle Pond and the Great Lawn, which lie where one of the park's old reservoirs used to be.
Since 1919 the castle has housed Central Park's official weather station, so the park's official weather records are kept here. After a restoration that began in 2018, it reopened on 28 June 2019 and now works as a visitor centre with exhibit rooms and an observation deck.
- The view from the terraces over Turtle Pond and the Great Lawn.
Cleopatra's Needle
Behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art stands a far older monument: a red granite obelisk about 21 metres tall, erected at Heliopolis in Egypt on the orders of the pharaoh Thutmose III around 1475 BC. About two centuries later Ramesses II added inscriptions celebrating his victories, and in 13 or 12 BC the Romans moved it to Alexandria. It has nothing to do with Cleopatra, who lived some 1,400 years after it was made; the nickname came much later.
Moving the obelisk from Alexandria across the Atlantic was a major engineering project, and William Henry Vanderbilt paid most of the cost. It was raised in Central Park in 1881, with an official ceremony on 22 January of that year.
- The hieroglyphs of Thutmose III and Ramesses II on its four faces.
How to see them in one walk
Start at Balto, on the path north of the children's zoo, then cross to the Columbus statue at the foot of the Mall. Walk north along the Mall to Bethesda Terrace, go down the stairs to the fountain, and continue east around the Lake to Conservatory Water and the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. From there head north-west through the park to Belvedere Castle on Vista Rock, and finish by crossing east, behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Cleopatra's Needle.
See Central Park with World City Trail
Our Central Park scavenger hunt turns the park into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from the Obelisk to Alice in Wonderland, and all six places in this guide are on it: Cleopatra's Needle, Belvedere Castle, the Columbus statue, Balto, Bethesda Terrace and Alice in Wonderland. Along the way you also pass the Delacorte Theater, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre, the Imagine mosaic and the Skater's Circle, solving a puzzle at each stop at your own pace.
If you prefer a different format, there is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Central Park.
Play the Central Park scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Central Park →
Play the outdoor escape game in Central Park →
Facts checked in October 2026.