When Walls Talk: The Graffiti From History
When Walls Talk: The Graffiti From History
From the Red Army in the Reichstag to the Taliban in Afghanistan, 22 examples of graffiti that capture the passions and pain of history.
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Politically charged graffiti is likely as old as civilization itself. In the ruins of Pompeii, this caricature of a Roman politician is one of several lively and sometimes raunchy images scratched into the walls of the doomed city, which was buried by a volcanic eruption in A.D. 79.
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A rampaging gladiator etched into a Pompeii wall. Merriam-Webster defines graffiti as “usually unauthorized writing or drawing on a public surface.”
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In 1870, journalist Henry Morton Stanley etched his and his newspaper’s name into the ruins of Persepolis, in today’s Iran. A year later, the Welshman famously discovered the missionary David Livingstone in the African jungle.
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A message on the walls of the former Gestapo headquarters in Paris. The note appears to include the words “I’m not sleeping. Thinking of my parents and my darling Louise.”