It stands on a c. 160 m peak on the eastern side of the island approximately 13 km east by road from the main port.

There may have been another temple in the 7th century BC, also located on the same site, but it is thought to have been much smaller and simpler in terms of both plan and execution.

Significant quantities of Late Bronze Age figurines have been discovered at the site, including proportionally large numbers of female figurines (kourotrophoi), indicating – perhaps – that cult activity at the site was continuous from the 14th century BC, suggesting a Minoan connection for the cult.

[3] The last temple is of an unusual plan and is also significant for its pedimental sculptures, which are thought to illustrate the change from Archaic to Early Classical technique.

[4] The periegetic writer Pausanias briefly mentions the site in his writings of the 2nd century AD, but does not describe the sanctuary in detail as he does for many others.

In 1811, the young English architect Charles Robert Cockerell, finishing his education on his academic Grand Tour, and Baron Otto Magnus von Stackelberg removed the fallen fragmentary pediment sculptures.

Systematic excavations at the site were carried out in the 20th century by the German School in Athens, at first under the direction of Adolf Furtwängler.

From 1966 to 1979, an extensive second German excavation under Dieter Ohly was performed, leading to the discovery in 1969 of substantial remains of the older Archaic temple in the fill of the later terrace walls.

In its earliest phase of use during the Bronze Age, the eastern area of the hilltop was an unwalled, open-air sanctuary to a female fertility and agricultural deity.

Furtwängler proposes three phases of building at the sanctuary, with the earliest of these demonstrated by an altar at the eastern end dating to c. 700 BC.

Also securely known are a cistern at the northeast extremity and a structure identified as a treasury east of the propylon (entrance) of the sanctuary.

Furtwängler suggests that this temple is the oikos (house) referenced in a mid-7th-century BC inscription from the site as having been built by a priest for Aphaia; he hypothesizes that this house of the goddess (temple) was built of stone socles topped with mudbrick upper walls and wooden entablature.

[7] The top of the hill was slightly modified to make it more level by wedging stones into the crevices of the rock.

Ohly detected a (stone socle and mudbrick upper level) peribolos wall enclosing an area of c. 40 by 45 m dating to this phase.

The temple was a hexastyle peripteral Doric order structure on a 6 by 12 column plan resting on a 15.5 by 30.5 m platform; it had a distyle in antis cella with an opisthodomos and a pronaos.

These works exerted a formative influence on the local character of Neoclassicism in Munich, as exhibited in the architecture of Leo von Klenze.

According to the standard myths, Zeus raped the nymph Aegina, who bore the first king of the island, Aiakos.

As the eastern facade of the temple (the front) was the most important visually, it is not surprising that the builders would choose to focus additional efforts on it.

On Aegina as one goes toward the mountain of Pan-Greek Zeus, the sanctuary of Aphaia comes up, for whom Pindar composed an ode at the behest of the Aeginetans.