John Lennon Monument in Lima, Peru (Parque John Lennon, San Miguel)

The John Lennon monument in Lima, Peru (Monumento a John Lennon) is a bronze statue by Arequipa sculptor Fredy Luque in Parque John Lennon, San Miguel district, on the 2nd block of Av. Juan Bertolotto beside the Costa Verde skatepark. The municipality unveiled it in 2007 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' formation.

A mayor's Beatles project, unveiled in 2007

San Miguel put up its Lennon monument in 2007, for the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' formation. Lonely Planet gives only the year. A 2012 WebUrbanist round-up of Lennon memorials narrows it to July 2007. Some pages say December 2007, and we couldn't find a source for that.

The statue was a personal project of Salvador Heresi, the district's mayor at the time and a devoted Beatles fan. His administration was known for music festivals where Heresi himself took the microphone. His term also gave San Miguel statues of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII, and a rebuilt Malecón Bertolotto, the clifftop road where Lennon now stands. The district presented Parque John Lennon as a spot where Peruvian fans could pay their respects every year, much as fans do at Strawberry Fields in New York.

Lima's statue was not the first in South America

The address of this page still repeats an old claim that Lima has the only public monument to John Lennon in South America. Local publicity went further and called it the first. Both claims are wrong.

The University of Brasília has had a John Lennon statue on its public campus, near the University Restaurant, since 16 August 1995, twelve years before Lima's. The sculptor was Ivna Mendes de Moraes Duvivier, and it was the architect Lúcio Costa who asked for the statue to be moved to the campus; he said Brasília marked the 1960s in the way the Beatles did. There is more on our Brasília statue page.

Colombia got there earlier still, though not in a public space. In 1981 the sculptor Rodrigo Arenas Betancur made a 3 m bronze Lennon for the Posada Alemana hotel in Quindío. It stood on private property until it disappeared in 2003, and it was put back at the Posada Alemana near Salento in March 2026.

You may also read that this is the only public monument in Peru to a foreign musician. That is doubtful too. Infobae's 2023 round-up of monuments in the Lima area includes a statue of the Puerto Rican salsa singer Héctor Lavoe in Callao.

Finding Parque John Lennon on the Costa Verde

Some guides put the park at the start of Av. Bertolotto. Local sources place it on the second block (cuadra 2) of Av. Juan Bertolotto, also called Malecón Bertolotto, in San Miguel. The statue is right next to the San Miguel skatepark on the Costa Verde clifftop and looks out over the Pacific shore, so there will probably be skaters around. Lonely Planet found it a little out of place there. The exact point is on the map.

If you want to keep walking, Parque Media Luna, one of the oldest parks in San Miguel, is also near the malecón, across from the Casa de la Cultura.

What to look for

The bronze shows Lennon with long hair, as he looked in the late 1960s, cradling a guitar. You may see him described as seated and life-size, about 1.7 m tall. We found no source for that, and OpenStreetMap records the monument as a bust, so judge the pose for yourself when you get there.

Then look at the ground in front of him. The "Imagine" mosaic is modelled on the memorial circle at Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

Anniversary tributes on 8 December

The park is used for tributes around the anniversary of Lennon's death. For the 32nd anniversary, on 7 December 2012, Heresi and the Venezuelan Beatles tribute band Los Beat3 were scheduled to lay flowers at the statue, and Peruvian rock musicians including Gerardo Manuel were announced as joining them. Other places where fans gather for Lennon are in the full list of memorials.