Fans set up a makeshift memorial at Amy Winehouse’s London home after her death Saturday. From the candles outside Heath Ledger’s apartments to the Field of Flowers at Kensington Palace for Princess Diana, see photos of celebrity shrines.
Since Amy Winehouse died on July 23, two shrines have been erected outside her home in Camden Square, London. One shrine is very traditional; it is filled with bouquets, photographs, and handwritten notes. At another shrine to the troubled “Rehab” singer, fans have placed beer cans, half-empty bottles of wine, and cigarettes. One fan who left a lit cigarette said, “It’s symbolic. Amy was a smoker.” One of Winehouse’s neighbors called the atmosphere around the shrines “frantic,” saying, “People were sitting around on the pavement like at the end of a house party when something’s gone horribly wrong.” Even Winehouse’s parents visited the shrines, and her father, Mitch, told the crowds, “You people in the street, I can’t tell you what this means to us—it really is making this a lot easier for us.”
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R&B star Aaliyah died on August 25, 2001 when the plane she was traveling in crashed in the Bahamas. Several makeshift shrines to the 22-year-old singer quickly popped up in cities around the country. In New York, an artist painted a mural of Aaliyah, with angel wings, on a building in the Lower East Side. In Los Angeles a billboard advertising her third album, which had been released in July 2001, was transformed into a memorial where fans left flowers and wrote messages. One fan in Detroit said, “It hurts even for a lot of people that don’t know her personally, because we can relate to her and we admire her spirit.”
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After Elvis Presley’s death on August 16, 1977, fans began to gather around his home of Graceland almost immediately. By the following day, 20,000 fans had arrived. The day the estate was opened for those hoping to view Elvis’s body, 80,000 fans entered to see it. At one point, a drunk driver rammed into the crowd, and killed two teenagers. Fans also began leaving huge numbers of flowers at the estate in Elvis’ honor. Eventually the estate had to send flowers directly to the mausoleum where the starE would be buried. Reportedly, all the blossoms in Memphis had been sold by August 17.
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After fashion designer Alexander McQueen killed himself in 2010, mourners created shrines outside his stores in London and New York. In London, fans left lilies and roses. Outside McQueen’s store in New York City’s Meatpacking District, fans left flowers and notes. One note read, “Long Live McQueen.”
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John Lennon was shot on December 8, 1980 outside The Dakota, his apartment building in New York City. Soon after his death was announced, crowds gathered outside the building bearing candles, and singing Lennon’s music, including “Give Peace a Chance.” One fan remembered, “"The whole street was filled with people, all ages, all descriptions, in groups, individually, many of them sobbing, curious onlookers, reporters, and just a lot of people in a state of shock."
Mario Cabrera / AP Photo
After Heath Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008, fans gathered outside his former apartments in New York City, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn. Fans set up makeshift memorials outside the entrances. Outside Ledger’s apartment on Broome Street in SoHo, where he died, fans left flowers, notes, and candles. One fan said of the crowds, “It’s fascinating to me, this whole media extravaganza.” While near Ledger’s former apartment in Brooklyn, one neighbor said of his death, “That’s terrible. I used to see them with their dry cleaning and their baby. It’s really sad.”
Gary He / AP Photo
Michael Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009 shocked the world, and fans reacted around the globe by creating impromptu shrines. The massive outpouring of support led Jackson’s funeral to be turned into a lavish memorial at Los Angeles Staples Center, watched by an estimated 31 million people online. Tributes continued for months, and in September, thousands in black fedoras and gloves gathered in Mexico to dance to ”Thriller” On the anniversary of Jackson’s death, dozens of fans from around the world gathered at Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery where he is is buried, to pay tribute to the singer.
Misha Japaridze / AP Photo
Former First Lady Betty Ford had inspired millions with her struggles with alcohol and drug addiction, as well as her fight against breast cancer. After she died on July 8, 2011, hundreds came to her public viewing in Grand Rapids, Michigan—some leaving letters and other mementoes featuring Ford. A makeshift shrine was set up outside the driveway of the funeral home, with flowers, candles, photos, stuffed animals, letters and posters.
JEFF KOWALSKY
After Farrah Fawcett died in 2009 of anal cancer, fans took to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to leave candles, flowers and photographs of the iconic actress. They weren’t the only ones to memorialize her: Fawcett and her ex, Ryan O’Neal, had a tumultuous relationship, but that didn’t stop him from setting up his own shrine of photos and other memories of his former lover. “He has this thing, like a shrine, on top of his television in his bedroom,” said O’Neal’s daughter, Tatum. “There is a picture of Farrah and pictures of his kids.”
Charley Gallay / Getty Images
Jackass star Ryan Dunn died in fiery car crash on June 22 in Pennsylvania, and his fans flocked to the site of the crash to leave flowers and other mementoes. Dunn’s co-star, Bam Margera, eventually visited the shrine, breaking down in tears and saying he had lost his “best friend.”
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There have been few deaths in history that touched so many as that of Princess Diana, who died in 1997 in a fiery car crash in a Paris tunnel. Millions flocked to Kensington Palace, where Diana lived, turning the adjacent Kensington Garden into a “Field of Flowers.” On the 10th anniversary of her death, the Field of Flowers returned and Diana’s family opened up the gates at Althorp, their Northamptonshire estate, for the first time on the anniversary. In the years after her death, the “Flame of Liberty” statue in Paris had been turned into a shrine for Diana. But the most famous shrine was not makeshift at all, but deliberate: Mohammad al-Fayed, the father of Diana’s boyfriend Dodi al-Fayed, who died with her, set up a shrine to his son and Diana at the iconic London department store Harrod’s. As a result of the memorial—which included an exhibit called “Innocent Victims” that blamed Prince Philip for orchestrating the pair’s deaths—the Royal Family refused to patronize the store.
Adrian Dennis / AP Photo
The Las Vegas showcase at the Hard Rock Hotel filled with Nirvana memorabilia became a makeshift shrine to fallen singer, Kurt Cobain, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 5, 1995. Fans stuffed poems, photos, driver’s licenses and money into the bottom of the case, which the Hard Rock management said would be donated to charity. Cobain’s death came to define a generation, and in honor of the 17th anniversary of his death, in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington, a 13-foot stone statue was set up as a memorial to Cobain.
Kevin P. Casey / AP Photo
