Morosini Fountain

This guide to the Morosini Fountain in Heraklion opens with the empty pedestal above its four stone lions, once topped by a towering statue of Poseidon so large that locals called the whole monument the Giant's Fountain. It traces back to 1628, when Venetian governor Francesco Morosini answered the city's chronic water shortage with a fifteen-kilometer stone aqueduct from springs near Mount Juktas, feeding eight basins through lion-mouthed spouts chosen to advertise Venetian power. Look closely at the lions themselves, worn by four centuries of hands and weather, long after the Ottomans who once ruled here left their own mark on the stone around them.