page_title: Heraclea Minoa
section_title: Houses
hierarchical_section_title: Heraclea Minoa / Archaeology / Houses
caption_attribution_description: English: Heraclea City walls
context_page_description: Heraclea Minoa was an ancient Greek city situated on the southern coast of Sicily near the mouth of the river Halycus, 25 km west of Agrigentum. It is located near the modern town of the same name in the comune Cattolica Eraclea in Italy.
  Excavations have revealed several parts of the city which are now open to the public.
  Archaeology has shown that the city was founded in the middle of the 6th century BC as an outpost of the Greek colony of Selinus and was finally abandoned around the beginning of the 1st century AD.
context_section_description: The oldest IV-III c. BC settlement is visible at present through two completely excavated houses: A and B.
  House A had a courtyard (atrium) equipped with a large cistern into which water from the compluvium pitched roofs drained. North of the courtyard was a domestic shrine (lararium) of which the quadrangular altar leaning against the northwest corner and the shrine for the lares in the east wall are preserved. The floor of the room is in cocciopesto decorated with white pieces while the walls retain remnants of the stucco decoration (Pompeian 1st style).
  House B had an upper floor whose rubble (unbaked bricks of the walls, threshold slabs, stuccos, plasters, decorated cocciopesto floor and mosaic) filled the rooms on the ground floor during their collapse. The state of preservation of the walls is exceptional, not only of the lower stone part but also of the higher mud bricks. The walls were plastered and painted.
  The older settlement was overbuilt in the II-I c. BC by that identified with the repopulation of the colony at the end of the First Servile War in 132 BC. The organisation of the city with a grid of insulae framed by north-south and east-west roads follows the pattern of the previous phase. The houses typically consist of two or more rooms surrounding a courtyard with a hearth. The house walls are built on a base of chalk stone blocks with mud bricks above.
caption: City walls NE sector
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "SONY DSC", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSLR-A450", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DSLR-A450 v1.00", "Image DateTime": "2019:10:02 10:54:25", "Image ExifOffset": "234", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/2500", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:10:02 10:54:25", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:10:02 10:54:25", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "9", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "987/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "361/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2288", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1520", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}