In 1926, this rolling, tree-shaded green flanking Biscayne Boulevard was built up with fill dredged from Biscayne Bay. Here, in 1933, an assassin fired his revolver at Franklin Delano Roosevelt, missing the newly elected President but fatally wounding Chicago mayor Anton Cermak.

The mountain is a magnet for the romantic, particularly on warm evenings. The imposing figure from another time guarding the park’s eastern edge is that of Cristobal Colon, better known as Christopher Columbus. His statue is a 1953 gift to Miami from the Italians, Colon’s countrymen.

Another memorial, a stark and subdued double helix, rises at the park’s south-eastern edge. Created by Japanese sculptor Isamus Noguchi, the monument commemorated the seven astronauts who died in 1986 when NASA’s space shuttle Challenger exploded soon after its launch from Cape Canaveral.