John Lennon Statue in Durrës, Albania

Yes, Albania has a John Lennon statue. It is a bronze by Durrës-born sculptor Qazim Kërtusha, unveiled in the port city of Durrës in May 2011 as a nod to Albanians who loved the banned Beatles under communism. First placed near the Venetian Tower, it now stands with other rock-star figures on the Taulantia seaside promenade.

Why Durrës honored a banned Beatle

Under communism the Beatles were banned in Albania, yet thousands of young people listened to them in secret through the 1960s. When the statue was unveiled in May 2011, press reports gave that hidden fandom as the reason for it.

There was an election coming, too. Mayor Vangjush Dako unveiled the bronze in the run-up to the 2011 local elections and described it as the municipality's gift to a welcoming tourist city, a message of peace and freedom ahead of the vote. Durrës Municipality paid for it with help from a private bank the reports didn't name.

Qazim Kërtusha, the sculptor, was 58 then. He is from Durrës and has more than 15 works in the city. The 2011 reports described Lennon seated with his guitar on a decorative bench in a flower garden near the Venetian Tower, across from the port. The Albanian name is Skulptura e John Lennon.

Timeline of the Durrës Lennon statue

Several points in this story come from sources that disagree. Where they do, both versions are given.

• May 2011: Kërtusha's Lennon is unveiled on its bench near the Venetian Tower.
• May 2015: Bronze Tina Turner and Mick Jagger figures by a group of Tirana artists join him near the port gate. The thinking was that young Albanians who listened to these singers had dreamed of the West right there.
• 2017: Seven park sculptures, Lennon included, are taken off the square in front of the port for the "Veliera" project and put into storage.
• 2018 (disputed): An anthropologist writing for Al Jazeera in 2023 remembered seeing Turner next to Jagger, Lennon and Bob Dylan on a café-lined square on a 2018 trip. That doesn't square with the storage reports.
• May 2020: Gazeta Tema finds the sculptures still locked away and calls Kërtusha the biggest loser of the removals.
• Date unknown: The musicians go back up as a group on the Taulantia promenade. We found no date for this.
• September 2022: Someone tears the Tina Turner figure off its base and leaves only her shoes.
• October 2024: BIRN's Reporter.al reports that Lennon's glasses have been replaced several times.
• March 2025: The Turner figure disappears overnight from the promenade, for the second time.

If you've read about a "Rock Icons" installation where Turner stood "until 2022," neither the name nor the date holds up. No source calls it that, and Turner went missing twice.

Who stands with Lennon on the promenade now

The group is on Marinari Square along the Durrës seafront. The sail-shaped Veliera structure marks the end of the promenade, and the Venetian Tower nearby now houses a 3D museum. The coordinates on this page come from the OpenStreetMap point for the whole group, so treat them as approximate. Some older guides place it about 150 meters away.

Who exactly stands there is less settled than you'd think. Reports from 2022 and 2023 name Lennon, Turner, Jagger and Dylan, and so does the OpenStreetMap entry. Albanian coverage of the 2025 Turner theft lists Jim Morrison where Jagger should be. Maybe a reporter got it wrong, maybe a figure changed. No source settles it, so have a look when you're there.

It's also unclear whether Lennon still has the bench he sat on in 2011. Nothing written after 2020 describes the relocated figure closely. Reporter.al's 2024 piece does attribute the Lennon with the replaced glasses to Kërtusha, which points to the same statue.

Missing glasses and other damage

The glasses are what people steal. They've been replaced several times, so don't be surprised to find Lennon without them. Other statues in town fare no better: two gladiators by Janaq Paço in a garden by Rruga Taulantia have needed new shields and swords after vandalism.

And not everyone was convinced by the likeness in the first place. A 2012 Flickr caption records a local guide flatly denying that the man on the bench was Lennon.

The 2023 Al Jazeera essay mentioned above used the Turner statue beside Lennon to explain why Western rock stars came to stand for freedom in post-communist Albania. It's a fair reading of the promenade group, and close to what Dako said in 2011.

Other Lennon statues on this site include the Havana bench statue and the Vilnius bust. Browse all of them on the memorials list.