Imagine no graffiti: new regulation to fall on Prague’s Lennon wall

Extra police and surveillance cameras to arrive as protest site becomes open-air gallery

Prague’s Lennon wall, long a symbol of free expression and resistance to communist-era surveillance, is to be monitored by TV cameras and converted into an open-air gallery with graffiti strictly regulated, in an effort to tackle rampant vandalism and obscene artwork by drunken foreign tourists.

Extra police will also patrol an area once renowned as a haven of rebellion against authority but now being overwhelmed by tourism. Some tour guides provide customers in their groups with paint to spray their own slogans.