The city's flagship park, this cheery outdoor space boasts two basketball courts, an outdoor street hockey rink, two lush baseball fields also used for soccer and football, and an extra-large tot lot featuring the city's only super-high slide. But wait there's more. A water play area, plenty of picnic tables and shaded seating as well as a fascinating outdoor museum that serves up city facts and history on colorful, giant lollipop-shaped signs round out the fun. You'd never know the beautiful 4.5-acre site was a former brownfield that the city reclaimed after a smelting company spent 50 years polluting it.

Other highlights include a park house with bathrooms, a state-run DCR indoor skating rink in the center of the property, and a free parking lot (on Bleachery Court). And no resident should miss out on the fun facts on the storytelling path. Did you know, for instance, that Mary of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" lived in Somerville?