Legendary crooner Tony Bennett spent his final days strolling in Central Park, reciting poetry to his family and sketching at his New York City home as he battled Alzheimer’s before his death aged 96 on Friday. 

Bennett was seen being pushed in a wheelchair around Central Park in recent weeks in what’s believed to be one of his last outings before his pᴀssing.

The iconic musician has been battling Alzheimer’s disease for years, but only revealed his diagnosis to the world in 2021. His cause of death is not yet known.

While Bennett continued to sing with perfect pitch and dynamism, he began exhibiting symptoms of mental decline in 2018, and struggled with his memory.

But that didn’t stop him from one last collaboration with close friend Lady Gaga at their Radio City Music Hall gig – and the release of a new album in September 2021.

A source told DailyMail.com that near the end Bennett was ‘no longer able to hold a conversation’, but added he was being ‘looked after very well and had physiotherapists visiting him daily’. 

Tony Bennett (pictured here in April) spent his final days strolling in Central Park and reciting poetry at his New York City home as he battled Alzheimer’s until his death aged 96 on Friday

Fans take a picture with Tony Bennett as he is wheeled around Central Park in April 

Bennett was then seen in June – in what is thought to be the last pH๏τos of him before he died

Bennett’s third wife Susan Crow told OK! Magazine in April that he didn’t understand his Alzheimer’s diagnosis because ‘physically he felt great.’

‘He would ask me, ‘What is Alzheimer’s?’ Crow who wed Tony in 2007 said. 

‘I would explain, but he wouldn’t get it. He’d tell me, ‘Susan, I feel fine.’ That’s all he could process, physically he felt great. So nothing changed in his life. Anything that did change, he wasn’t aware of.’

Crow added that mundane objects as familiar as a fork or a set of house keys suddenly were mysterious to him.

Dr. Gayatri Devi, a neurologist at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital, who diagnosed Bennett, told the magazine back in April that at that time Bennett had some ‘cognitive issues, but multiple other areas of his brain are still resilient and functioning well.’

Dr. Devi added: ‘He is doing so many things, at 96, that many people without dementia cannot do. He really is the symbol of hope for someone with a cognitive disorder.’

Bennett was cared for in his final months by his third wife, Susan, who was 40 years his junior and whose mother raised her as a dedicated fan of the singer

Bennett could often be found at his easel painting or sketching in front of the mᴀssive windows

PH๏τos from the singer’s Instagram also showed his love of cooking in the couple’s kitchen – everything from pasta to meatballs to elaborate breakfast dishes

Artwork and stunning décor compliment the space but the center piece is the grand piano

Bennett shows off his Christmas tree in a pH๏τo he posted on Instagram in 2020

Bennett, who was father to four adult children – Danny, Dae, Johanna and Antonia – was cared for in his final months by his third wife, Susan, who was 40 years his junior and whose mother raised her as a dedicated fan of the singer.

‘I talk to him all the time,’ said his daughter Antonia, who lives in Los Angeles. ‘Sometimes he is very, very lucid and he will recite poetry to me or share lyrics from a favorite song. On bad days, he still knows who I am and seems to be happy — and that’s the most important thing.’

Bennett spent his final days with his wife and family at his Upper East Side home that boasts mᴀssive windows with a stunning view of a 51-block stretch of the city skyline and Central Park. 

He could often be found at his easel painting or sketching in front of the windows, the outside view as his muse. In previous interviews, he has revealed that he painted at least 800 different scenes of Central Park.

‘Instead of buildings, you have nature here,’ he told The San Diego Tribune in 2019. ‘There’s nothing more powerful than that.’

A caretaker pushes Bennett to Central Park for an afternoon 

Bennett enjoys a day out in the sun in New York City in April of this year

The living room of the apartment is inviting with soft yellows walls, hardwood floors and an-around Italy-inspired style. Artwork and other stunning decor compliment the space but the center piece is of course the grand piano. 

PH๏τos from the singer’s Instagram also showed his love of cooking in the couple’s kitchen – everything from pasta to meatballs to elaborate breakfast dishes. 

‘My resolution for this year is everything in moderation … well, except for pasta,’ he wrote in a caption for a pic of the noodle spirals on their large kitchen table. ‘Especially when it’s homemade!’

The eminent musician – who was born in Long Island City, Queens in 1926 and went on to enjoy a decades-long career that saw him collaborating with superstars from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga – pᴀssed away on Friday in his hometown of New York, his publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed.

During his lifetime, Bennett released more than 70 albums and earned 19 Grammys Awards – all but two after he reached his 60s – and enjoyed the adoration of millions of fans across the world.

Legendary crooner Tony Bennett has pᴀssed away at the age of 96 

Bennett (seen in 1952) began singing when he was just a young boy – and signed his first record contract in the early 1950s after serving in the US Army during World War II

Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, Bennett would interpret a song rather than embody it.

If his singing and public life lacked the high drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner, and an uncommonly rich and durable voice.

‘A tenor who sings like a baritone,’ he called himself, a skill that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.

‘I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,’ he told The ᴀssociated Press in 2006. ‘I think people… are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor….

‘I just like to make people feel good when I perform.’

Bennett was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: ‘For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me.

‘He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.’

Perhaps his most famous collaboration was with his close friend, Lady Gaga, with whom he worked on multiple occasions, with the pair releasing an album together in September 2021

Amy Winehouse’s last studio recording was with Tony Bennett. His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary ‘Amy’

His final album, the 2021 release Love for Sale, featured duets with Lady Gaga on the тιтle track, ‘Night and Day’ and other Porter songs

He not only survived the rise of rock music but endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren.

In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for ‘Cheek to Cheek,’ his duets project with Lady Gaga.

Three years earlier, he topped the charts with ‘Duets II,’ featuring contemporary stars such as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording.

His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary ‘Amy,’ which showed Bennett patiently encouraging the insecure young singer through a performance of ‘Body and Soul.’

His final album, the 2021 release ‘Love for Sale,’ featured duets with Lady Gaga on the тιтle track, ‘Night and Day’ and other Porter songs.