John Lennon in Bulgaria: Sofia's Lennon Wall and Its Missing Relief

Bulgaria's John Lennon memorial was a bas-relief of Lennon in artificial stone on the wall of the former Notary building, bul. Patriarh Evtimiy 2, in central Sofia. Fans unveiled it on 8 December 2010, thirty years after his death, at a wall Sofia students had written on since 1980. The relief disappeared in late 2018 and has not been replaced.

The wall students wrote on in 1980

After Lennon was murdered in December 1980, high-school students in Sofia started writing messages to him on the garden side of the Notary building. (The building itself had been listed as a local architectural monument in 1976.) One early inscription told John he was in their hearts. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the city's hippies came back on the anniversary of his death and set candles among the posters and drawings.

The wall was filmed for the 1988 documentary "The Wall" and also turns up in the feature film "Megi", which one source dates to 1986 and another to 1989. You may have read that the wall began as a copy of Prague's Lennon Wall. The Bulgarian accounts we used say nothing about Prague and trace it back to the students' messages.

What hung on the wall was a relief

Several English descriptions, an earlier version of this page among them, talk about a bronze bust on a stone pedestal. The memorial was actually a flat bas-relief: a plaque of Lennon's face in artificial stone, fixed straight onto the wall, with no pedestal at all.

It was unveiled at noon on 8 December 2010, the 30th anniversary of Lennon's death. That year also happened to be the 70th anniversary of his birth, though the unveiling was not held on his October birthday. Blues musician Vasko Krapkata and his friends put it up; the municipality did not commission it. The sculptor's surname is Marinov. Most reports give his first name as Petar and two give it as Petyo. Petyo is a common short form of Petar, so they are probably the same man, but none of the sources says so directly.

How it went missing

By November 2018 the relief was gone. Radio Tangra Mega Rock noticed first, and the newspapers caught up in January 2019. It had been taken off neatly, with no broken fragments left behind.

Nobody has been identified. One account links the disappearance to repair work on the neighbouring street, and Sofia Municipality said the repairs had nothing to do with it. The building was being managed at the time by Bulgaria's anti-corruption commission, KPKONPI, which denied any part in it.

The timing has an awkward twist. In September 2018, shortly before the relief vanished, Radio Tangra Mega Rock's hosts had announced plans for a separate Lennon monument in the garden beside the wall. The relief was supposed to stay where it was.

Why nobody could report a theft

In 2019 the Sredets district administration said it had no ownership documents for the relief, no placement permit and no municipal council decision. Fans had put it up, and on paper it belonged to no one. So no theft report was filed. Without ownership papers, the police could not register one.

You may also come across a story about thieves ripping a bronze off its pedestal and melting it down for scrap. None of the reporting says that, and the relief was never bronze.

The mould and the offer to recast

Marinov kept the mould. He offered publicly to recast the relief free of charge, and by March 2019 nobody had accepted. The municipality floated a replacement of its own, quoting about 1,000 leva for a base and saying the Sredets district would tighten security. We found no report that a new relief was ever put up.

What is at the Notary building now

The address is bul. Patriarh Evtimiy 2, on the garden side at the corner with ul. Graf Ignatiev (it's on the map). Nothing of the Lennon relief is left. What you can see is the Notary building wall and the small garden off Graf Ignatiev, where fans used to meet on 8 December. Some guides mention a surviving pedestal or plaque, but no source reports one, and the relief was the plaque.

Don't expect the wall to match old photos. Graffiti keeps changing it. In March 2022, for example, an unsigned black-and-white picture of Putin carrying his own corpse appeared there.

Bulgaria's other Lennon landmark

Sofia also has a John Lennon Street (ul. Dzhon Lenan), but it is nowhere near the wall. It is in Studentski grad, the student district, and the name is linked to Bulgaria's student holiday on 8 December, the date Lennon died. For Lennon memorials that are still standing, see the full list.