It was founded on a spectacular and strategic site, on the Acremonte plateau of the Hyblaean Mountains, difficult to attack and with a clear view of the surrounding area, which explains its establishment as a guard post at Syracuse's borders.

[3] It was on the road to the great city of Gela, along with the Necropolis of Pantalica, Kasmene (military outpost on Monte Lauro), Akrillai and Kamarina (the most distant of the colonies, founded 598 BC).

The original colonisation of Kamarina is attributed to the Syracusans, around a hundred and thirty years after the foundation of Syracuse; the founders were called Daskon and Menekolos.

Notably, its army intercepted the invasion force of Nicias in the Val di Noto or Anapo in 421 BC, contributing to his defeat.

In the second half of the 6th century BC a temple of Aphrodite was founded indicating Akrai's beginiinnings of an urban centre.

It was probably in his time a mere dependency of Syracuse, though it is found in Pliny's list of the "stipendiariae civitates," so that it must then have possessed a separate municipal existence,[9] and is noted by the geographer Ptolemy.

On the flat area above Intagliata are the foundation stones of the Aphrodision, the temple of Aphrodite, erected in the mid-6th century BC.

Cold in winter and hot in summer, being imprisoned in the latomie was equivalent to a death sentence: they were left to die of hunger and starvation, with no possibility of escape.