An artist who painted a stunning graffiti mural which has been turning heads in Sliema intends to complete the piece in northern Italy in a couple of weeks.

The four-storey high mural shows a man scrambling into a hole in a wall of a building, adjacent to the Regina car park.

Many on the way to Bisazza Street have stopped to marvel at the piece, wondering whether there is a story to the grey man in red shorts and flip-flops.

It took the French artist, who goes by the name MTO, three days to complete the mural, which formed a part of the Sliema Arts Festival.

Asked about his piece, he told this newspaper to “wait a week or two... you will understand”.

But Pierre Portelli, who chairs the festival committee, said the other part of the mural will show the man coming out of a wall in an as yet unspecified building in the north of Italy. It is meant to portray the struggle of migrants who leave southern shores and head to northern Europe in search of a better life.