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A Colorful Landmark in Prague – The Lennon Wall

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The history of the ever-changing Lennon Wall, Or John Lennon Wall is rather interesting! It all began as just an ordinary wall in the 1980s until students protesting the communist government of the time, sprayed colorful peace slogans, bits of Beatles' songs and other graffiti against communism on the wall, which belongs to The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which happily allows the graffiti to continue!

When John Lennon was killed, he became a hero to the young Czech people who had no freedom to even listen to any of the western pop songs of the day. Someone painted a likeness of him on the wall, and having some portraits of Lennon and a yellow submarine somewhere on the wall has become a tradition over the many years since. Lennon became a symbol for the freedom they did not have.

The students would sneak out in the dark to write slogans and anti-communism sentiments, and then the police would whitewash over it! Nothing stopped these brave young people from expressing their views – not even security cameras and a guard posted there overnight!

Some say that the idea of a peaceful freedom from communism came from the Lennon Wall to inspire the non-violent Velvet Revolution of 1989 that brought an end to the era of communism in the former Czechoslovakia.

The Wall will never look exactly the same when you visit it. That's what makes it so interesting! I have three times left my mark there, armed with just colorful magic markers, but my scribbles will be long gone. In fact a group of students whitewashed the entire wall in 2010 on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. They said it was so that a whole new group of artists would get to start over! And they did! The wall is as colorful as ever!

There are no anti-communism slogans on the wall anymore, just expressions of love and peace – and of course portraits of John Lennon!

Image © Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Be sure to click on the image to view full screen!}
My stock image is available for licensing on Alamy here

Camera	Canon EOS 5D
Lens	EF28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Exposure	/40 sec; f/7.1; ISO 800
Location	Prague, Czech Republic
Post-processing	Adobe Photoshop® CC 2017 and Adobe Camera Raw

Thanks to @juliank for the #colourfulphotography contest. You can read about the rules here.

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