What is on the back of a penny?

The Lincoln Memorial appears on the back (reverse) of the U.S. one-cent coin, the penny, in the design used from 1959 through 2008, known as the Lincoln Memorial cent. The penny was redesigned in 1959 to mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth (Lincoln was born February 12, 1809), replacing the wheat ears reverse used since 1909 (the Wheat penny), and it depicts the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., a Greek temple-style monument completed on May 30, 1922 in honor of the sixteenth President of the United States (Abraham Lincoln, 1861 to 1865, who preserved the Union and ended slavery). On close inspection of high-grade Lincoln Memorial pennies, a tiny seated figure of Lincoln is visible inside the monument, making the penny the only U.S. coin that depicted the same person on both sides.

The Lincoln Memorial cent was designed by Frank Gasparro, then an assistant engraver at the U.S. Mint and later Chief Engraver. The Mint produced the Lincoln Memorial penny from 1959 through 2008, then issued four commemorative reverse designs in 2009 to mark the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth (a log cabin, Lincoln reading on a log, Lincoln at the Illinois state capitol, and the unfinished Capitol dome). Beginning in 2010, the penny adopted the current Union Shield reverse, designed by Lyndall Bass and engraved by Joseph Menna, which is used on every penny minted since.

The obverse of every U.S. penny since 1909 has shown a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in profile, designed by Lithuanian-born sculptor Victor David Brenner for the centennial of Lincoln's birth. The Lincoln penny was the first regularly circulating U.S. coin to feature a real person; before 1909, U.S. coins typically depicted Liberty or other symbolic figures.

As of the 2020s, U.S. pennies are made of zinc with a thin copper plating (the composition has been 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper since 1982); they cost more than one cent to mint, and Congress has periodically debated whether to discontinue them. The Lincoln Memorial itself, located on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, contains a 19-foot seated marble statue of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French, the text of the Gettysburg Address (1863) on its south wall, and the text of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865) on its north wall.