During the 6th century, Akragas was still a modest city: the buildings, intended for both sacred and living purposes, were built with mudbrick on stone bases.
Land on the plateau was divided into arable plots and the urban structure was beginning to look like the arrangement of roads and buildings that the city would soon have.
As seen from the votive wooden sculptures found in the area, the southern hill had long been used for sacred activities, while the city boundaries had taken shape on the rocky ridges of the Hypsas and Akragas rivers. It was only towards the end of the century, however, that the city adopted a real plan that organised the streets into
plateies
and
stenopoi
.
One of the city’s most important streets connected Porta V to Porta II, passing north of what we now know as the Hill of the Temples, but which at that point was not yet built.
The ethnic and cultural components of the new city were particularly influenced by the characteristics of the homeland: the Rhodians, with their merchant liveliness, set up an
emporium
at the mouth of the river Akragas and later began to mint the first Akragantine
coins
.
The Cretans, on the other hand, imported their refined craftsmanship; it is said that the tyrant Phalaris offered the goddess Athena a splendid krater, or large vase, by the Cretan Daedalus, which depicted typical Cretan myths.
In the Sanctuary of the Chthonic Deities, a sacred enclosure is still visible with a layout reminiscent of the temple of Gortyna on the island of Crete.
