THE ALLURE OF CENTRAL PARK is difficult to pinpoint. More than 20 million visitors come to the park each year – making it a must-do tourist attraction that far exceeds the Statue of Liberty (4 million visitors per year) and the Empire State Building (1.5 million). No lines and no admission fees certainly play a role in the number of tourists who choose to visit the most popular urban park in the United States, but there also might be something else – some desire, conscious or not, to see the place that people from Paris to Lansing, Mich., recognize as something that they’ve seen before – but where?

Since 1908, more than 200 movies have been filmed in Central Park, according to the Central Park Conservancy. Aside from being a green respite from the concrete and glass behemoth of Manhattan, the park is also where Dustin Hoffman taught his son to ride a bicycle in “Kramer vs. Kramer”; where Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire danced on roller skates in “Shall We Dance”; where Frank Sinatra walked into the lake in “The Manchurian Candidate”; and where Rick Moranis was transformed into Vince Klortho, the “Keymaster of Gozer,” in “Ghostbusters.”

“The park is multi-serviceable,” said Hugh Cohen, a film professor at the University of Michigan.  Cohen said the park is used for scenes varying from a romantic horse-and-buggy ride to the violence seen in films like “Die Hard with a Vengeance.”   “The filmmaker can use [the park] because people everywhere know and feel for this setting.”