Lennon Wall, Prague

The Lennon Wall is the garden wall of the Order of Malta's Grand Prior's Palace on Velkopřevorské náměstí in Malá Strana, Prague, near Charles Bridge. In mid-December 1980 someone chalked a tribute to John Lennon on it. Through the 1980s it became a place of protest against the communist regime, and people have kept writing on it ever since.

A wall people wrote on before Lennon

People were writing on the walls here long before 1980. In the 1960s fans left messages for the actor Jan Werich, who lived around the corner on Kampa. By the 1970s the plastered wall of the Maltese Garden had a nickname, the Wall of Laments, and was covered mostly in poems, many of them love poems. The historian Petr Blažek, whose research is the basis for most of this page, cites a samizdat essay from 1977 noting that the verses already reached halfway along Velkopřevorské náměstí.

From a chalk cross to a political wall, 1980 to 1981

John Lennon was shot in New York on 8 December 1980. In mid-December an unknown person chose an empty stone slab set into the wall, probably once part of a public water supply. On it they wrote "Za Johna Lennona" (For John Lennon) in chalk and drew a cross above. People soon added candles, flowers and photographs. Early in 1981 Stanislav Jirčík replaced the chalk with a stencilled text giving Lennon's dates, together with his photograph. The wall got its name from this makeshift grave. No painted portrait was involved at that stage.

In April 1981 the wall was painted green for the first time. Blažek links the repaint to preparations for the 16th Congress of the Communist Party. It changed the character of the place. Roman Laube, who later documented the gatherings, recalled that the poetry disappeared and political slogans took its place. The first one he noticed was "Palach by plakal" (Palach would cry). In November 1981 an exile magazine published in West Berlin reported that the slogan "You have Lenin, leave us Lennon" kept coming back, and that someone had been given the job of erasing it every day.

Hoarding, dogs and the 1988 folk concert

On 8 December 1981, the first anniversary, a few dozen young people met at St Vitus Cathedral and walked down to the wall. The meeting had been advertised by writing on beer mats in pubs. Repainting was not working, so the authorities fixed poster hoarding almost 3 m high to the wall on iron hooks. One participant, Jiří Wolf, later told of breaking it off with pickaxes at night about three times. Each time workmen put it back the next day. Until 1989 most anniversary gatherings therefore took place on the small square by the Čertovka channel, a few steps away, rather than at the wall itself.

The gatherings grew. In 1984 several hundred people came, signed petitions against Soviet missiles and marched off Malá Strana. Police cars drove into the crowd and dogs were used to push it across Charles Bridge, and the march was finally broken up near Old Town Square. Later petitions called for the release of political prisoners and for a civilian alternative to military service. ČT24 reports that State Security (StB) set dogs and tear gas on these "lennoniády", as they were called.

By the late 1980s hundreds of police were being sent to Kampa every December, and the crowds kept coming. In 1988 the StB tried something else. With approval from the Party's Central Committee presidium, the Socialist Youth Union took over the anniversary and held a permitted folk concert by the Čertovka. In the same discussions the Prague party official Miroslav Štěpán proposed putting an official plaque to Lennon's peace activism on the square. In December 1989, after the Velvet Revolution had begun, the John Lennon Peace Club organised the anniversary openly.

Who owns the wall, and the fights over its surface

The wall belongs to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and encloses the garden of its Czech Grand Priory. After 1989 the hoarding came down. The Order repaired the crumbling wall and agreed to the Peace Club's request for a Lennon portrait by the painter František Flašar. The hope that visitors would add only flowers around it did not last.

From then on, the disputes were over paint:

What the 2019 memorial-site rules allow

By 2019 some tour agencies were handing tourists spray cans at the wall. Prague 1 deputy mayor Petr Hejma and the Order agreed on a reset. The Order paid about 250,000 CZK to stabilise the wall, restore its historic gateway and apply a protective coating. More than 30 artists from five countries painted new work, including the sculptor Kurt Gebauer and the glass artists Vladimír Kopec and Jakub Berdych. Prague City Tourism describes the centrepiece as a world map with "FREEDOM" written in 30 languages. On 7 November 2019 Prague 1 declared the wall a memorial site, the first official status it had ever had.

That status came with limits. Spraying is banned, and so are loud busking and drinking parties. Visitors may still write, but only in the white zones and only with a pencil, marker or chalk. Cameras watch the wall and police patrols were stepped up. Hejma put the idea this way: the wall stands for freedom, but freedom there means respecting others, not the absence of rules.

The 2022 mirror and the inflatable copy

The 2022 repaint was organised by Pavel Šťastný and Robin Suchánek. Artists from all 27 EU member states took part, with guests from Ukraine and Norway, and they finished in a single day. At the centre they placed a large round mirror carrying another Lennon portrait, so that visitors see themselves and the houses behind them. The wall was photographed and printed at full size, 35 by 5 m, on airship fabric to make an inflatable replica you can walk through. It stood in front of the Panthéon in Paris for one day, 20 October 2022.

Other Lennon memorials in Czechia

Lennon was also commemorated far from the capital, where police were less likely to interfere. Since 1982 a hand-built stone cairn has stood below the summit of Smrk in the Beskydy mountains, at a spot where regional dissidents met. See the John Lennon memorial on Smrk, or browse all countries on the map.