Overview
The twelve murals of the People’s Gallery are painted on the gable ends of people’s homes along Rossville Street, and that is the thing to grasp before you go: the Bogside is a lived-in neighbourhood, not an open-air museum, even if it reads like one. It sits on the west bank of the River Foyle just below Derry’s walled city, on ground that was once a marshy floodplain of the Foyle – hence the name, in Irish Taobh an Bhogaigh, the boggy side. The murals and the Free Derry Corner wall are free to see at any time. What they can’t give you on their own is the context, and that is worth paying for.
If you have only an hour, walk the murals and the corner. If you have a morning, take a guided tour first and then walk them again – the difference is between looking at paintings and understanding what happened on the street you’re standing on.
The murals, and what they record
Beginning in 1994, three local artists – Tom Kelly, William Kelly and Kevin Hasson, who worked as the Bogside Artists – set out to put the district’s recent history on its own walls. Funded by community donations, they painted twelve large-scale murals covering the civil rights marches, the 1969 Battle of the Bogside, Bloody Sunday, the 1981 hunger strikes and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. They are not celebrations of conflict; the recurring subject is the human cost. The tribute to Annette McGavigan, a 14-year-old schoolgirl and the first child killed in the Troubles, is the one most people stop at longest.
The context behind them is stark. In August 1969 the Battle of the Bogside turned the area into a self-declared no-go zone, and the ‘Free Derry’ slogan went up on a gable wall. On 30 January 1972, during Bloody Sunday, British soldiers shot dead unarmed civil rights marchers on these streets. That day is why the world knows the name.
Free Derry Corner and the museum
At the junction of Rossville Street and the Lecky Road, Free Derry Corner keeps the original gable-end where ‘You Are Now Entering Free Derry’ was first painted in 1969, now a free-standing wall with an illuminated sign. A hundred yards on, in Glenfada Park off Rossville Street, the Museum of Free Derry has reopened after a redevelopment, with multimedia exhibits on the civil rights movement, the Battle of the Bogside and Bloody Sunday. In summer 2026 local residents get in free on Mondays and students pay half-price – worth checking their current hours before you go, as they change with the season.
Taking a tour
The murals are free to walk, but a guided tour is what turns them into a story. Bogside History Tours runs an hour-long walk that starts at the Guildhall, retraces the original Bloody Sunday march route and is often led with first-hand accounts from relatives of those killed and wounded. Tours go at 11am and 1pm, seven days a week, and cost £17 per person. They’re based at Guildhall Street (BT48 6DQ); the same outfit also runs the Derry Walls and day trips out to the Giant’s Causeway and Inishowen. If you’d rather go alone, free maps are available at the city visitor centre.
Gasyard Féile
Each summer the Gasyard Féile takes over a former gas yard in the Bogside for a few days of live music, arts and street food – a reminder that this is a neighbourhood with a present as well as a past. If your visit lines up with it, it’s the easiest way to see the place as its residents do.
Getting there and practical notes
- Location: Rossville Street / Lecky Road area, Derry (Londonderry).
- From the city centre: about a five-minute walk from the Guildhall. Cross Guildhall Square, go left onto Waterloo Place, continue up William Street to the roundabout, then turn left onto Rossville Street; the Museum of Free Derry is roughly 100 yards down on the right.
- Parking: the William Street car park is the closest public option.
- Admission: viewing the murals and Free Derry Corner is free. Guided tours and the museum charge; check current prices when you book.
- A word of respect: these murals are on the ends of people’s houses. Keep your voice down, don’t touch the paintwork, and don’t block doorways or driveways for a photo.
Nearby
Derry’s walled city, with its seventeenth-century ramparts and the view down over the Bogside from the Grand Parade, is a few minutes’ walk across the top of the hill – do the walls and the Bogside on the same day and you get both sides of the same history.