John Lennon Plaque on Puebla's Plaza John Lennon

Puebla's John Lennon plaque is on the pedestrian block of Avenida 3 Oriente next to the Edificio Carolino, the old BUAP university building in the historic centre. University students and neighbours started calling the street Plaza John Lennon in 1982. A plaque followed in 2006, and after two thefts a talavera version was unveiled in October 2025.

A street named by students in 1982

The name came from the neighbourhood, not from city hall. In 1982, two years after Lennon was killed, students at what was then the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, most of them from the philosophy and music faculties, got together with people living on the street and began calling it after him. They signed a manifesto under the name "Los que Imaginan". The musician Guillermo Briseño was one of them.

The name stuck, but it was never made official. The block is a stretch of Avenida 3 Oriente, so it isn't technically a plaza or an alley, and it has gone by both "Plaza" and "Callejón" John Lennon ever since. In December 2022 a public talk there marked 40 years of the name.

Three plaques in twenty years

Raúl Núñez, a Beatles fan since he was 13, paid for the first plaque. He and Luis Limón spent time getting permission from the city government, the municipal arts institute and the university, and the plaque went up in 2006. Its text says Puebla recognises John Lennon (1940-1980) for his musical, cultural and humanist contribution to the world.

Someone stole that plaque, which Núñez describes as bronze, and the second one went the same way. Reports on the first plaque aren't consistent: one local account calls it a stone piece that disappeared within three years.

The third plaque was unveiled on 30 October 2025. This time it is talavera, Puebla's glazed ceramic, chosen so it wouldn't vanish like the other two. It sits on a base of cantera stone. Núñez picked the stone as a pun: Lennon's first band was the Quarrymen, and cantera is Spanish for quarry stone. The French poster artist Michel Bouvet came to the unveiling while he was in town for his exhibition of Beatles posters.

Photos of the plaque from before late 2025, including the one on this page, show an earlier plaque, not the talavera one.

The block today

The street runs along the side of the Edificio Carolino, across from the university's psychology faculty. On Saturdays and Sundays it turns into an artisan market, and some of the stalls sell Beatles-themed paintings and figures.

Other Lennon tributes in the region include the bronze Lennon on a bench in Havana, the Lima monument and, on Mexico's Pacific coast, the Beatles statues in Mazatlán. The map shows them all.