John Lennon Peace Monument, Liverpool

The John Lennon Peace Monument in Liverpool is Peace & Harmony, an 18-foot (about 5.5 m) work by American artist Lauren Voiers. Julian and Cynthia Lennon unveiled it in Chavasse Park on 9 October 2010, Lennon's 70th birthday. It now stands on the Kings Dock waterfront beside ACC Liverpool, about 300 m from the Beatles Story.

What the monument shows

Voiers described the piece as three stacked parts in a GRAMMY.com interview. At the bottom, a base and a globe are wrapped in musical instruments: a guitar, a saxophone and a piano that merge into one another. Above them, hands reach out and release birds. At the top is a white glass feather.

The feather was not in the first design. Julian Lennon asked for it. He has said his father once told him that if he died, a white feather would be the sign that everything was going to be all right. The rest of the sculpture is hand-painted metal, mostly aluminium according to GRAMMY.com, made by Lyle London and Shannon Owen at Art in Metal USA in Tempe, Arizona.

Voiers was 19 when she took on the commission, and she based the monument on her own painting, also called Peace & Harmony.

One monument per continent

The Global Peace Initiative, run by Ben Valenty, commissioned the work. Its plan was to place a peace monument on every continent. Singapore got the first, for Asia, and Liverpool's became the second, for Europe, which is why the piece is also called the European Peace Monument. Wikipedia records a third as planned for South America. We found no source saying it was built.

Lennon was picked as the subject for Europe, so his home city was the obvious place for it. Pete Best, European ambassadors and council leader Joe Anderson attended the unveiling on Saturday 9 October 2010. Two months later, on 8 December 2010, fans held a candlelit vigil at the monument on the 30th anniversary of Lennon's death.

Three locations in two years

The monument has been in more than one place, and old articles still describe the earlier ones.

We found no report giving the date of the move to Kings Dock. Commons photos show it in Chavasse Park as late as March 2011 and at the arena by 25 March 2012. A photo dated September 2025 shows it still there. The GRAMMY.com page was written before the unveiling but now carries a 2014 date, so treat its location detail as a plan that changed.

Liverpool's other Lennon memorials

People searching for "John Lennon memorial Liverpool" may mean David Webster's bronze John Lennon statue on Mathew Street, about 1.1 km away in a straight line. The Beatles Story at Royal Albert Dock is about 300 m from the monument, and the Beatles Statue at Pier Head is about 940 m away.