12 Walls and Corners Reimagined by Street Artists (Befor and After)

Before & After: 12 Street Art Transformations

Some walls do not need a small touch-up. They need someone to notice a whole new world hiding in the concrete. These before-and-after transformations turn blank façades, forgotten corners, bus stops, pipes, and abandoned rooms into places with character, humor, depth, and life.

More: The Most Spectacular Murals You’ve Ever Seen

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🏙️ The Canuts Fresco — By CitéCréation in Lyon, France 🇫🇷

A flat, bare façade becomes an entire neighborhood. CitéCréation identifies the work as “The Canuts fresco”, created on a huge windowless wall in Lyon’s Croix-Rousse, and Lyon’s tourism office notes that the 1,200 m² trompe-l’œil was first made in 1987 and later updated in 1997 and 2013. Stairs, shops, balconies, painted residents, and climbing greenery now appear where there used to be only concrete.

💡 Nerd Fact: This mural is designed to “grow old” with the neighborhood: Lyon’s tourism office explains that when the fresco was updated in 1997, a young man carrying a bicycle from the original version was repainted as a young father with his little daughter. The wall does not just show Croix-Rousse — it keeps time with it.

More: 10 Photos of a Building in Lyon Before and After It Was Painted

🔗 Visit CitéCréation’s website

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🏡 “Juliette et les Esprits” — By Patrick Commecy in Montpellier, France 🇫🇷

Patrick Commecy does not just paint windows onto a wall. On A-Fresco’s project page, “Juliette et les Esprits” is described as six famous Montpelliérains regaining a view over Parc Clémenceau, with figures including Juliette Gréco, Léo Mallet, Pierre Magnol, and Antoine-Jérôme Balard. The blank wall disappears into balconies, plants, dogs, residents, and a tower that looks like it belongs to the street.

💡 Nerd Fact: Two of the painted figures carry science history: Antoine-Jérôme Balard discovered bromine in 1826, and Britannica notes that the element’s name comes from Greek bromos, meaning “bad smell” or “stench.” Another painted figure, Pierre Magnol, lives on every time someone says Magnolia.

More: A French Masterpiece in 9 Photos: Patrick Commecy’s Mural in Montpellier

🔗 Visit Patrick Commecy’s A-Fresco website

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🏘️ “Opowieść Śródecka z Trębaczem na Dachu i Kotem w Tle” — Concept by Radosław Barek in Poznań, Poland 🇵🇱

This is the kind of transformation that makes a neighborhood feel remembered. The City of Poznań’s page explains that local activist Gerard Cofta asked Prof. Radosław Barek to sketch a mural about Śródka’s history, while Fundacja Artystyczno-Edukacyjna PUENTA carried out the realization. Inspired by old images of the district, the wall becomes a historic street with rooftops, a butcher’s shop, a trumpeter, a cat, and Władysław Odonic woven into the scene.

💡 Nerd Fact: This mural works like a local-history map: Poznań’s city page says the rider is Władysław Odonic, the Duke of Greater Poland who granted Śródka town rights in 1231. The roof trumpeter is also a memory marker — he recalls the old Śródka town hall that no longer exists.

More: A Masterpiece in Poznań’s Historic Śródka District

🔗 Visit Radosław Barek’s website

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🏢 3D Balcony — By Kartitect at New Forms in Sochi/Sirius, Russia 🇷🇺

Kartitect takes a flat wall and gives it architecture it never had. The New Forms festival lists Kartitect among the artists in its 2024 Sochi/Sirius edition, and the official Sirius announcement describes Kartitect as a Kazakh artist using paint to create illusion, with Russian and Kazakh ornament traditions folded into the design. The curved balconies, shadows, and blue floral details make the building look suddenly finished.

💡 Nerd Fact: This was part of a much larger festival. Sirius says New Forms brought more than 25 artists from 11 countries, with art objects covering more than 4,000 m² across Sirius and Sochi. Kartitect’s wall was part of a whole street-art district being built at once.

More: Walls You Can Feel

🔗 Follow Kartitect on Instagram

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🌊 Poseidon Wall — By Braga Last One in Torreilles, France 🇫🇷

A plain turquoise surface becomes a broken classical portal with Poseidon emerging from the wall. Les Billes S’Agitent 2022 took over the former cooperative winery in Torreilles, and Trompe-l’œil.info documents the round-wall work by Tom Bragado Blanco, alias Braga Last One. The illusion feels heavy, sculptural, and mythological because the architecture itself becomes part of the temple.

💡 Nerd Fact: The sea-god theme was not random. Artistik Rezo’s festival note says the first Les Billes S’Agitent edition centered on water, the sea, and the environment, tying the art to Torreilles’ Mediterranean setting and the festival’s eco-responsibility message.

More: From Blank Wall to Masterpiece: The Stunning Creation of a Poseidon Mural in Torreilles

🔗 Follow Braga Last One on Instagram

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🦉 “Knowledge Speaks – Wisdom Listens” — By WD in Athens, Greece 🇬🇷

The old corner building was already full of texture, but WD turned its damage into presence. In WD’s original post for the 2016 Athens piece, the owl is tied to wisdom, Athena, and far vision in low light; This Is Athens places the mural in Metaxourgio, at the corner of Palaiologou and Samou Street. The owl wraps around the architecture so naturally that a forgotten ruin suddenly feels like a guardian watching the street.

💡 Nerd Fact: The owl is an ancient Athenian symbol. The Acropolis Museum describes a silver tetradrachm from 483–480 BC with Athena on one side and an owl on the reverse, plus the letters ΑΘΕ — short for “of the Athenians.”

More: Beautiful 3D Art by WD

🔗 Follow WD on Instagram

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🛋️ Simpsons Bus Stop — By DUUDOOR in Campo Grande, Brazil 🇧🇷

A neglected concrete bus stop becomes the Simpsons’ living room, and the mood change is instant. The same structure that looked forgotten suddenly feels funny, colorful, and strangely welcoming. DUUDOOR turns a waiting place into a tiny pop-culture room, a perfect example of how public art can make an everyday spot feel cared for.

💡 Nerd Fact: This bus stop taps into TV history, not just nostalgia. Britannica notes that The Simpsons debuted as an independent series on December 17, 1989, and that the first aired episode was a Christmas special used after the planned pilot had animation problems.

More: This Bus Stop in Brazil, Before and After an Artist Added Their Touch

🔗 Follow DUUDOOR on Instagram

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💀 Skull in the Wall — By SCAF at an abandoned place

SCAF makes decay feel intentional. In a before/after post, the artist tagged the piece as an anamorphic 3D spray-paint work in an abandoned place, and that is exactly what makes it land: cracks, stains, and rough wall texture become part of the skull’s drama. What looked like an abandoned interior becomes a scene breaking through from the other side.

💡 Nerd Fact: Skulls have carried this meaning in art for centuries. The Science Museum explains that a memento mori object reminds viewers of death’s inevitability and life’s brevity, with skulls among the most common symbols.

More: Skull by SCAF at an Abandoned Place

🔗 Follow SCAF on Instagram

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🚌 Wrecked Bus — By Odeith

Odeith does not paint a bus beside the room. He makes the room become the bus. In his original post, Odeith described the project as transforming an old block wall into a wrecked bus; in a Bored Panda interview, he said the painting took about 10 hours and around 30 spray cans. The corner, ceiling, and empty space all get recruited into the illusion, until a bare interior suddenly feels occupied by a vehicle with real weight.

💡 Nerd Fact: Odeith is not just a casual tag. In an I Support Street Art interview, Sérgio Odeith said his name sounds like the Portuguese phrase odeio-te, meaning “I hate you.” A dark-sounding name for an artist who keeps making dead spaces come alive.

More: How to Paint a 3D Bus on Concrete — By Odeith

🔗 Visit Odeith’s website

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🐞 Giant Beetle — By Odeith

The rounded concrete structure already had the body shape. Odeith saw the beetle hiding inside it and pulled it out with shadows, legs, highlights, and a forced-perspective viewpoint. The result feels discovered more than invented: the hard shell was already suggested by the architecture, and the paint makes it crawl into view.

💡 Nerd Fact: Beetles are one of nature’s biggest design families. GBIF notes that Coleoptera includes about 400,000 described species and makes up roughly 25% of all known animal life forms. So this small-looking idea is actually based on a gigantic branch of life.

More: 8 Optical Illusion Street Art Pieces That Play Tricks on Your Mind

🔗 Follow Odeith on Instagram

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🚆 Abandoned Train — By Odeith in Portugal 🇵🇹

This one feels like abandoned-space poetry. A plain white block becomes a rusted train car that looks strangely at home inside the room. It is not just a trick of perspective — the graffiti, rust, windows, and painted shadows change the whole atmosphere of the space.

💡 Nerd Fact: For Odeith, the train form also points back to graffiti’s roots in his own story. Bombing Science notes that he started his career in the streets and train tracks of Damaia in the 1980s, so painting a train-shaped object inside an abandoned space quietly loops back to where his practice began.

More: 5 Photos of a 3D Graffiti Train by Odeith

🔗 Watch Odeith on YouTube

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🦩 Pink Flamingo — By Tom Bob in Massachusetts, USA 🇺🇸

A gray gas meter and a few pipes become a flamingo with attitude. Tom Bob’s original 2017 post captions it “PINK FLAMINGO” and tags the gas meter in New Bedford, Massachusetts. His magic is that he does not need a huge wall to make a transformation feel huge; he finds the joke already sitting there and gives it color, character, and a reason to make people stop.

💡 Nerd Fact: This flamingo lands in a city with deep maritime history. The National Park Service says New Bedford was the whaling capital of the world in 1841, when 21-year-old Herman Melville sailed from its harbor on the Acushnet — a voyage that later helped feed Moby-Dick.

More: How Genius Is This Art

🔗 Follow Tom Bob on Instagram

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Which one is your favorite?