Lennon Wall, Prague

The Lennon Wall is the boundary wall of the Maltese Grand Priory’s palace garden, beside Velkopřevorské náměstí in Malá Strana. Across its painted surface, you can trace a public conversation that refuses to settle into a final form. Messages and images connected with John Lennon have appeared here since the nineteen-seventies.

After Lennon was killed in nineteen eighty, an unidentified artist made a memorial image on a stone remnant of a former fountain; flowers, candles, and photographs soon gathered there. Under communist rule, the wall became a place where poems and criticism reappeared after repeated attempts to cover them. Today its themes extend beyond Lennon to causes ranging from freedom to climate action. The original portrait disappeared beneath later layers, which is fitting: this wall’s subject is not preservation, but renewal.