Over the course of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, major changes occurred in Athens which laid the foundations for the prosperous and powerful state of classical Athens. In this lecture Dr Gillian Shepherd traces some of these important developments. A critical area of the city – the agora, the public square which was the administrative and commercial heart of the Athenian state – seems to have been designated in this period and the first civic buildings erected around it. After the social tensions of the 7th century, three major political upheavals occurred in the 6th century: the reforms of the lawmaker Solon, the tyranny of Peisistratos and, at the very of the century, the rise of Athenian democracy – the subject of the next lecture.

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