The foundation of the city in an area previously inhabited by the Sicani and invaded by the Sicels in the 13th-12th centuries BC, is perhaps connected to the city of Hybla Major. Hybla was the name of a pre-Greek divinity, later identified with the Greek Aphrodite. The Greeks colonized there in the 8th century. An important hoard of Ancient Greek gold jewellery and over 300 coins was found in the vicinity of Avola in 1914. Estimated to date between 370 and 300 BC, the extant items of ornate jewellery are now housed in the British Museum and comprise a pair of bracelets with double snake-heads, a finger-ring and an ear-ring with the figure of Eros.

When the Romans conquered Sicily in 227 BC, the city of Syracuse maintained some autonomy in the control of the area, which lasted until the Second Punic War (212 BC). Hybla disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and the territory started to be repopulated during the Islamic domination of Sicily (9th-11th centuries). However, the village near what is now Avola appeared only during the Norman or Hohenstaufen rule (12th-13th centuries).

Like much of south-eastern Sicily, Avola was destroyed by an earthquake in 1693, and was refounded in a new location of the coast, under the design of friar architect Angelo Italia, having a geometrical and regular plan.

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