Man with daisy flower

Before moving on, turn around for a moment so you don’t miss the mural titled Man with Daisy Flower. Here, street art becomes part of the city itself, offering a brief pause with the harbour stretching out behind it. The figure you see is dressed in work clothes that evoke the maritime world — perhaps a fisherman, or more generally someone whose life is tied to the coast. And that connection runs deep in Heraklion. From antiquity, when the city already served as the port of Knossos, to the Venetian period, when maritime trade brought great wealth to the city, the harbour has always shaped Heraklion’s identity. Yet in the man’s hands is something unexpectedly delicate: a simple daisy. It’s not a specifically Cretan symbol, but in spring these flowers appear everywhere across the island’s fields, announcing the return of warmer days. Perhaps he’s playing that familiar game known across much of Europe, plucking petals one by one to discover whether the person he loves feels the same. In English, the rhyme usually goes: “He loves me… he loves me not.”