The stacked layers
Look closely at the wall's edges: dozens of paint layers over each other since the 1980s — the physical trace of forty years of messages.
Adam Zivner — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Andrew Milligan sumo — CC BY 2.0 · Andrew Milligan sumo — CC BY 2.0 · Andrew Milligan sumo — CC BY 2.0
No, never. The wall has nothing to do with his presence and everything to do with his image being used as a symbol of freedom against a regime that banned his music.
Yes — this particular wall is open to everyone and is expected to keep changing. The one ethical rule is not to obliterate someone else's substantial work. Do not try it on any other wall in the city.
Fifteen minutes is plenty. It is a stop on a route rather than a destination — fold it in between Charles Bridge, Kampa island and the Church of Our Lady Victorious.
Radically: the original Lennon portrait vanished under the layers long ago, and what you see now is a constantly renewed collective work. Part of the point is that no photograph of it is final.
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In a quiet side square in the Lesser Town, minutes from Charles Bridge, runs a long wall covered layer on layer in painted colour and writing. The wall belongs to the Knights of Malta, but its story belongs to a whole generation of young Czechs. After John Lennon was murdered in 1980, someone painted his portrait here with lines from his songs. In communist Czechoslovakia that was a political act rather than an artistic one: messages about freedom and peace appeared on the wall at night, the secret police painted over them by day, and the next night they came back. The cycle repeated for years, and the wall became a quiet symbol of peaceful resistance until the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Today the wall is free and permanently changing: what you photograph now will be gone under a new layer in a month. It costs nothing, is always open, and takes fifteen minutes — but it slots perfectly into a Lesser Town route between Charles Bridge and Kampa island. Respect the one rule: add your layer if you like, but do not erase someone else's work entirely.
Look closely at the wall's edges: dozens of paint layers over each other since the 1980s — the physical trace of forty years of messages.
Someone is often playing Beatles songs in front of the wall — the detail that turns a quick photo into a moment you remember.
Metres away lie the Čertovka canal, a small bridge hung with padlocks, and a wooden mill wheel still turning.
The Knights of Malta square is one of the calmest corners of the Lesser Town, despite sitting minutes from the Charles Bridge crush.
Velkopřevorské náměstí, Malá Strana, Prague 1