Page 457 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

also organize hiking, caving and archeological trips around Sant’Angelo (from
around €50 per person), can arrange pick-ups from Agrigento and is a mine of useful
information on the area.

ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE: SANT’ANGELO MUXARO

By bus From Agrigento, buses for Sant’Angelo run by Lattuca ( 0922 36 125,
autolineelattuca.it) leave from Piazza Vittorio Emanuele (Mon–Sat at 10.30am,
2.10pm & 6.30pm; the last bus back leaves at 4pm).

By car Drivers should take the SS189 branching off westward for Aragona and
Sant’Angelo, or choose the more wriggly but faster SS118 via Raffadali.

Eraclea Minoa

Thirty-five kilometres along the coast northwest of Agrigento is the ancient Greek site
of ERACLEA MINOA. According to the historian Diodorus, this was originally
named Minoa after the Cretan king Minos, who chased Daedalus from Crete to Sicily

and founded a city where he landed. The Greeks settled here in the sixth century BC,
later adding the tag Heraklea. A buffer between the two great cities of Akragas, 40km
to the east, and Selinus (Selinunte), 60km west, Eraclea was dragged into endless
border disputes, but flourished nonetheless. Most of what’s left dates from the fourth
century BC, the city’s most important period, three hundred years or so before it fell
into decline.

While you’re here, you’ll be hard put to resist a trip down to the beach, one of the
finest on Sicily’s southern coast, backed by pine trees, chalky cliffs and a strip of
holiday homes. It’s hideously busy in July and August; unless you get here early, you’ll
never find a space to park.

The site

Daily 9am–1hr before sunset; may close Sun in winter, call to check • €4 • 0922 846 005

The site sits on a ridge high above a beautiful arc of sand, with the mouth of the River
Platani on the other side. Among the most attractive of all Greek sites in Sicily, it
occupies a headland of which only around a third has so far been excavated. What
there is to see is the fruit of successive excavations by foreign universities, who,
together with the local Comune, have landscaped the remains to good effect. Don’t

stray too far off the paths, though, as snakes lurk in the undergrowth.

Apart from the city walls, once 6km long and with a good part still standing, the most
impressive remains are of the sandstone theatre. Now restored to its former glory
after years of deterioration of the seats (which are made of very soft stone), the theatre