Heraclea Minoa (Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλεια Μινῴα, Hērákleia Minṓia; Italian: Eraclea Minoa) was an ancient Greek city of Magna Graecia situated on the southern coast of Sicily near the mouth of the river Halycus (modern Platani), 25 km west of Agrigentum (Acragas, modern Agrigento).

The city is situated a few hundred metres southeast of the mouth of the river Platani (the ancient Halycus) in a defendable position atop the conspicuous promontory now called Capo Bianco with gently sloping sides down to the Platani valley to the north and sheer white cliffs to the ocean on the south side.

The first of these was that Heracles, having vanquished the local hero Eryx in a wrestling match, obtained thereby the right to the whole western portion of Sicily, which he expressly reserved for his descendants.

[4] The first written mention of the city is of a small town and a colony of the Greek settlement of Selinus (itself founded about 650 BC), bearing the name of Minoa.

In c. 510 BC Dorieus the Spartan (brother of Cleomenes I) came to Sicily with the intent of reclaiming the territory which he believed had belonged to his ancestor Heracles.

[10] An inscription from the temple of Athena Lindia of Lindos on Rhodes attests the dedication of an ivory palladium as spoils from an undated victory of the Agrigentines over Minoa.

The next mention of it (under the name of Minoa), when Dion landed there in 357 BC when he attacked Syracuse, is as a small town in Agrigentine territory, but still subject to Carthage.

[18] In 260 BC in the First Punic War it was occupied by the Carthaginian general Hanno when advancing to the relief of Agrigentum, at that time besieged by the Roman armies.

[20] It appears at this time to have been one of the principal naval stations of the Carthaginians in Sicily and in 249 BC their admiral, Carthalo, took his post there to watch for the Roman fleet which was approaching to the relief of Lilybaeum.

[22] Little of it is recorded under Roman dominion, but it appears to have suffered severely in the First Servile War (134–132 BC) and in consequence received a body of fresh colonists, who were established there by the praetor Publius Rupilius.

The urban area outside the wall was occupied in the III-VII c. AD by a late Roman villa,[28] and in the Byzantine period with the construction of a large basilica and a connected cemetery.

According to Fazello an aqueduct was then also still visible between the city and the mouth of the river[30] but its remains have since disappeared, though the height difference makes this unlikely to be practible.

The theatre was built in the 4th-3rd c. BC into the hollow of a small hill with, unusually, the cavea facing south against the advice of Vitruvius.