The Lennon wall in Prague goes back to 1980, shortly after Lennon’s murder, when young Czechs painted an image of him, along with some political graffiti and Beatles lyrics, in a recess in this garden wall that backs a 14th century churchyard belonging to the Knights of Malta …
But despite
repeated whitewashing by the police, they never managed to keep the wall clean. It became a political focus for dissenting Prague youth, an outlet for exposing injustices ... this despite its
location in this quiet, well-heeled embassy district of Prague …
Lennon marches that started to take place on December 8th, the anniversary of John’s death, gradually became linked to Human Rights Day protests (December 10th), the early marches developing into running battles with armed police – in a movement ironically dubbed Lennonism – up until Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution.
Today the Lennon Wall has lost its counter-culture edge and original spirit as a forum for political dissidence. The graffiti is often inane, most likely to be added by the thousands of Western tourists who visit it each year to have their photo taken in front of it ...
My daily routine in Prague last week took me past the Lennon wall at least four times a day - which is how I discovered first hand the extent to which this is an evolving work in progress. Each day as I walked past, some image or piece of graffiti I remembered from the day before had been painted over, and occasionally I saw an artist in action ...
Mostly I pondered on the wall and its history right around the corner, at the lovely Cukrkavalimonada (can you pronounce that? I can't, but it means sugar, coffee, lemonade) ...
... coffee and pastry being one of the best ways I can think of to put the world to rights.
