Bogside Murals: Derry’s People’s Gallery Explained

Bogside Murals cover more than a dozen gable walls in Derry’s Bogside neighbourhood, turning a quiet residential area into one of Ireland’s most striking outdoor galleries. Painted mostly through the 1990s and early 2000s, these large-scale works document the Troubles, the civil rights movement, and the community’s long road toward peace, and they remain one of the most visited free attractions in Northern Ireland.

This guide walks through what the murals show, who painted them, and how to see them properly, including the history behind individual pieces and a few notes on visiting respectfully. Whether you’re planning a stop in Derry as part of a wider Northern Ireland trip or researching the murals from further afield, ConnollyCove has put together what you need before you go.

What Are the Bogside Murals?

The Bogside Murals, officially known as The People’s Gallery, are a series of large murals painted on gable ends across the Bogside, a neighbourhood just outside Derry’s historic city walls. Twelve murals form the core collection, each depicting a specific event or figure connected to the Troubles and the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland.

The murals sit close to Free Derry Corner, where the words “You Are Now Entering Free Derry” have marked the area since 1969. For deeper context on the events they portray, the Museum of Free Derry sits within walking distance and covers the same period through artefacts and first-hand testimony.

Derry or Londonderry? A Quick Note on Naming

Both names are correct, and which one you hear tends to depend on who you’re speaking to. Derry comes from the Irish “Doire,” meaning oak grove, while Londonderry reflects the city’s 17th-century plantation history and is still the county’s official name.

Nationalist residents generally favour Derry, and unionists tend to use Londonderry, though most locals move between both without much fuss when talking to visitors. Our guide to County Londonderry goes into the history behind the name in more detail if you’d like the fuller picture.

The Bogside Artists: Who Painted the People’s Gallery

Three local men, Tom Kelly, William Kelly, and Kevin Hasson, painted the murals between 1994 and 2008, working under the name the Bogside Artists. All three grew up in the Bogside and lived through the events they later painted, which is part of why the murals feel less like political statements and more like a community’s own record of what happened to it.

Their first major work, the Petrol Bomber, went up in 1994. The final piece in the series, a mural depicting peace and reconciliation, was completed in 2008, closing out a project that had spanned nearly a decade and a half.

Mural by Mural: What Each Piece Shows

Each mural in The People’s Gallery tells a distinct part of the Bogside’s story, from the outbreak of violence in 1969 through to the reconciliation that followed decades later.

Mural	Depicts	Completed	What It Marks
The Petrol Bomber	A young man in a gas mask throwing a petrol bomb	1994	The Battle of the Bogside, August 1969
Civil Rights	Marchers carrying a banner	1997	The 1968 civil rights movement in Northern Ireland
Bloody Sunday	Mourners carrying a victim’s body	1997	The events of 30 January 1972
The Death of Innocence	A young girl beside a broken rifle	1999	14-year-old Annette McGavigan, killed in 1971
Operation Motorman	British troops breaking through a barricade	2001	The 1972 military operation that ended “Free Derry”
The Hunger Strikers	Portraits of the 1981 hunger strikers	2001	The H-Block hunger strikes
Bernadette	Civil rights activist Bernadette Devlin	2001	Devlin’s role in the civil rights campaign
The Runner	A boy running with a burning tyre	2002	Community resistance during the Troubles
Peace	A dove breaking through cracked glass	2004	The move toward reconciliation

Standing in front of each one, it’s the small human details, a school tie, a specific street corner, a named victim, that separate these murals from more generic political street art elsewhere in Belfast. The murals of west and east Belfast cover similar ground but tend to split along sectarian lines street by street, whereas the Bogside collection was conceived as a single, continuous narrative from one side of the conflict’s community.

Restoration and the Future of the Bogside

The murals are actively maintained, not left to fade. Weather damage and fading paint have required repainting work on several pieces over the years, carried out with input from the original artists where possible to keep the murals as close to their original form as they can.

Local community groups continue to fund and organise this upkeep, and there’s ongoing discussion locally about how the collection should be preserved for future generations once the artists themselves are no longer able to do the work directly.

Planning Your Visit: Getting There and Walking the Trail

Seeing the murals costs nothing and takes most visitors between sixty and ninety minutes on foot. The Bogside sits a short, flat walk downhill from Derry’s city walls, close enough to combine with a morning spent exploring the walled city itself.

Most people start at Free Derry Corner and walk the length of Rossville Street, where the majority of the murals are concentrated. From there it’s a short stroll to the Peace Bridge, which makes a natural next stop if you’re spending a full day in the city. If you’d rather not navigate on your own, several local guides run walking tours that include first-hand accounts from people who lived through the period the murals depict.

Weather in Derry changes quickly regardless of season, so it’s worth packing a layer even on a bright morning. For a fuller sense of how the city fits together, our guide to Derry’s walled city covers the wider layout beyond the Bogside itself.

Visiting the Bogside Respectfully

The Bogside is a residential neighbourhood first and a tourist attraction second, and it’s worth keeping that in mind while you’re there. People live on these streets, and several of the murals depict named individuals who died young, so a bit of restraint with cameras and voices goes a long way.

“The families connected to some of these murals still live in the area, and every time we’ve filmed here, the thing that stays with us is how much the details matter to them, the exact date, the correct name, the right context,” says Ciaran Connolly, Founder of ConnollyCove. “Getting that right feels like the least we owe them.”

Basic courtesies apply: ask before photographing anyone nearby, keep noise down, and avoid treating Free Derry Corner as a photo backdrop separate from what it actually represents. It’s a similar etiquette to the one we’d recommend at Belfast’s Peace Walls, another site where the history is still within living memory for the people who live alongside it.

Beyond the Murals: More to See Nearby

The Bogside sits close enough to Derry’s main attractions that most visitors fold it into a wider day in the city rather than a standalone trip. Our roundup of things to do in Derry covers the walled city, the Guildhall, and the surrounding sights within easy walking distance.

If you’ve time for a slower afternoon, the Craft Village is a good spot for a browse and a coffee, and our guide to where to eat in Derry has options for most budgets once you’re ready for a proper sit-down meal.

Bogside Murals: The Takeaway

The Bogside Murals turn a difficult period of Northern Ireland’s history into something visitors can stand in front of and understand within an hour, without needing a guidebook’s worth of background first. They’re free, they’re easy to combine with the rest of a Derry visit, and they reward a bit of patience if you want to read past the paint into the specific stories behind each piece.

For more on Northern Ireland’s cities and coastline beyond Derry, our Northern Ireland travel guide covers the wider region, and ConnollyCove’s YouTube channel has video walkthroughs of Derry and the surrounding area if you’d like to see it before you go.

FAQs

Got more questions about visiting the Bogside Murals? Here are quick answers to what people ask most.