Michael Jackson Denkmal (Michael Jackson Memorial)

In most towns and cities you can find monuments, statues, and commemorative plaques to various people and events. However, most of these are constructed by or with the help of the local government. This monument to Michael Jackson is not like that at all, and is built by locals around an existing statue.

When Jackson died in 2009, it came as quite a blow to a lot of people. Many wakes and memorials were held and small makeshift shrines were constructed to remember the King of Pop. Some more permanent memorials were erected, but the vast majority of these shrines got taken down eventually. Oddly enough, this never happened in Munich, for the memorial built around a statue of Orlande de Lassus, a Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer. 

For over a decade now, this place has served as a makeshift memorial to Jackson, with pictures, flowers, notes, and other mementos being left constantly. Some fans even seem to treat it as a pilgrimage site, visiting it to pay their respects and leave an offering. The statue stands in front of the five-star hotel Bayerischer Hof, a hotel that MJ once visited during a tour. 

The locals have mixed feelings about it—some support the memorial while others see it as an eyesore. There have even been cases of people planting bird feed around it to try and destroy the shrine with the help of pigeons. None of these plans seem to work, though, as the site always gets cleaned up and redecorated. 

Some fans have gathered money to build a permanent monument to the pop star, but the city officials have so far been resistant to the idea, citing a severe case of monument-itis plaguing the city, which means that the shrine in its current form might very well remain for another decade at this rate.