Shortly after the expulsion of the main body of the Ottoman forces from Athens in 1822, Pittakis began to gather archaeological artefacts from around the city into the Church of the Megali Panagia, which was built on the former site of
Hadrian's Library, creating one of Greece's first archaeological museums. Between 1824 and 1828, he attended the
Ionian Academy on
Corfu, where he was taught by the scholar and classicist
Konstantinos Asopios. He studied modern languages, Latin and medicine – medicine being a common field of study for Greek intellectuals of the time, who often sought education in Germany, where legal, philological and architectural training were difficult for them to come by. According to the archaeological historian Vasileios Petrakos, it was on Corfu that Pittakis met his wife, Aikaterini, a fellow native of Athens. During his studies, he continued his archaeological work, returning in 1825–1826 to Salamis to transcribe and catalogue further inscriptions. In 1828, he unsuccessfully petitioned
Ioannis Kapodistrias, who had become independent Greece's first head of state in 1827, for an archaeological post; Kapodistrias instead offered him the post of first secretary to the law-court of
Elis, which Pittakis refused. Pittakis later recalled that Kapodistrias had advised him to learn English, so that he could guide English-speaking tourists around Athens's archaeological remains and gather information as to their views on Greece and its government, and to abandon what he said Kapodistrias had called his "delusional ideas" about the ancient Greeks: according to Pittakis, Kapodistrias had told him that the ancients were "restless heads, from whom we … can learn practically nothing." Pittakis returned to Athens, where he resumed his early work of collecting inscriptions, sending several to the German scholar
August Böckh for inclusion in the
Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. On , he announced the publication of his first book, which he claimed to contain 1,600 newly-published inscriptions. He excavated on Salamis and Aegina in early 1829, and sent several objects to
Andreas Moustoxydis, the director of
Greece's national archaeological museum (then based on Aegina), for display.
Greek Archaeological Service Since at least 1822, the Greek revolutionaries of the War of Independence had proclaimed that any independent Greek state would be ruled by a hereditary monarch from a European royal family, both to demonstrate compliance with the conservative values of the European Great Powers and to appeal to the political interests of those states in choosing the monarch. On , representatives of Britain, France and Russia selected the
Bavarian prince
Otto von Wittelsbach as Greece's king. In August 1832, the German archaeologist
Ludwig Ross travelled to Athens, as a guest of Jacob Black, Pittakis' brother-in-law; Ross's first visit in the city was to Pittakis's home, where the two discussed Pittakis's meeting with Kapodistrias and the latter's attitudes to Greece's past. On , Pittakis was appointed to the unpaid role of "custodian of the antiquities in Athens", in which capacity he gave tours of the Acropolis to foreign visitors: one of whom was the American author and poet
Nathaniel Parker Willis, who recalled being shown Byron's graffito of his own name on one of the columns of the
Erechtheion. Accepting the role on , Pittakis proposed to the Minister for Education, , that his role include responsibility for collecting the Acropolis's scattered antiquities, and establishing a museum in which they could be stored. in 1839The new king Otto arrived in Greece at
Nafplio, then the national capital, on . Pittakis was part of a delegation sent from Athens to welcome him. A decree of by the Minister for Education
Spyridon Trikoupis founded the
Greek Archaeological Service, as part of which Pittakis was appointed "sub-ephor" of Central Greece, reporting to the Bavarian architect
Adolf Weissenberg; Ross, meanwhile, was appointed sub-ephor for the
Peloponnese. Pittakis was one of only three native Greeks employed by the archaeological service. He was formally sworn in on . Around the same time, he was asked by the state to recommend a site for an archaeological museum in Athens, following a request from the local
prefect for 300
drachmas, approximately equivalent to a month of an upper-middle-class salary, to repair the
Temple of Hephaestus (then known as the ) for the purpose. Pittakis instead recommended the Propylaia, and asked only for 50 drachmas to build it a new door. Despite the recognition of the new Greek state by the Ottoman government under the
Treaty of Constantinople of , the Turkish garrison on the Acropolis did not surrender until March 1833, and some of its soldiers would remain on the site until 1835. Three days after Pittakis's return to Athens on , he informed Trikoupis that he had forbidden entry to the Acropolis to anyone not accompanied by him. Now empowered to do so, he carried out his first formal works on the Acropolis, demolishing
Frankish and Turkish remains in central part of the Propylaia and its north-east hall, known as the . He also began to collect together some of the scattered antiquities from the Acropolis, many of which were the remains of bombardments during the site's two recent sieges. He established a temporary museum for these objects in a former barracks. Among Pittakis's other duties was the financial assessment of antiquities presented by excavators and collectors to the government, which determined the reward paid for them by the state. A month after Pittakis's arrival in Athens, a cadet of the British
Royal Navy broke the nose off a sculpture from the
Parthenon Frieze: the cadet was fined £3 (). Pittakis requested the money for the restoration of other ancient monuments, and later claimed to have written about the matter to
Pulteney Malcolm, the commander-in-chief of Britain's
Mediterranean Fleet. The proceeds from the fine were used to support the first excavations around the Parthenon, which had begun on with funding from an Athenian antiquarian society, and which Pittakis was engaged in conducting: according to Rangavis, this cash injection was vital in ensuring their continuation. Pittakis cleared the temple's surroundings of medieval and early modern buildings, and recovered artefacts including three fragments of its north frieze, a
metope and various inscriptions. The excavation was visited by Otto in 1833, during his first visit to the Acropolis. After the withdrawal of the Turkish garrison, the Acropolis of Athens was occupied by a Bavarian military garrison. On , by a royal decree issued on the advice of the Bavarian architect
Leo von Klenze, the troops were dismissed from the Acropolis and the area declared an archaeological site. Despite Pittakis's existing status as "custodian" of its antiquities and the fact that Athens fell under the jurisdiction of his sub-ephorate, he was not selected to carry out the restoration work: instead, the task went to the German-born Ross, a favourite of King Otto, who was recommended by Klenze directly. Ross worked mostly alongside architects from northern Europe, particularly the
Prussian
Eduard Schaubert, the Danish
Christian Hansen and the
Saxon Eduard Laurent, an architect from
Dresden. The dominance of non-Greek scholars in the excavation and conservation of Greek monuments provoked resentment from the native Greek intelligentsia, and tensions between Pittakis and Ross. Construction work on the Church of the Megali Panagia between 1834 and 1835 necessitated the removal of its archaeological collection, which by then included 618 artefacts, to the . In 1835, Pittakis published a monograph in French on the topography and ruins of Athens. The work made extensive use of epigraphy, including (as Pittakis claimed) over 800 then-unpublished inscriptions, and has been described as the first epigraphical work written by an ethnic Greek. In this volume, he published the discovery of several
Ionic column capitals in the wall of the Church of the Agia Kyra Kandili near the
Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, along with a dedication to
Hestia, which he took to indicate an ancient temple. Modern scholarship has suggested that these were part of the temple and civic building known as the
Prytaneion, containing the sacred fire of Hestia seen as the heart of the political community. The original location of this structure, which served various public and political functions during the classical period, is no longer known.
"Naval Records Affair" of 1836 Pittakis had a long-running feud with Ross, Greece's Ephor General of Antiquities from 1834, which reflected wider tensions between native Greek archaeologists and the mostly-Bavarian scholars who, on the invitation of King Otto, dominated Greek archaeology in the early years of Otto's reign. In 1834 and 1835, excavations in the
Piraeus, Athens's ancient harbour, uncovered a series of inscriptions known as the "
Naval Records", which gave information on the administration and financing of the
Athenian navy between the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Pittakis studied the inscriptions and published two articles on them on and ; the articles have been described in twenty-first-century scholarship as "bad from every point of view". Ross replied with two articles of his own on and , calling Pittakis's work "full of the most palpable errors"; Pittakis wrote to the secretariat of the Archaeological Service demanding "due satisfaction" for what he considered Ross's insult, but was instead ordered to apologise to Ross. Ross sent sketches of the inscriptions to Böckh for the , despite having not yet received approval to publish them. The Greek authorities asserted that Ross's actions were illegal: Pittakis attacked Ross in the press, which largely sided with him, thanks to his service in the War of Independence and xenophobia towards Ross as an ethnic German. Public pressure forced Ross's resignation as Ephor General on , though the
Education Minister Iakovos Rizos Neroulos unsuccessfully petitioned Prime Minister
Josef Ludwig von Armansperg to refuse it. Eleven days later, Ross attempted to return to the Acropolis to study the inscriptions unearthed during his excavations there, but Pittakis denied him entry. He continued to write hostile articles against Ross until 1838, accusing him of allowing foreign journals privileged access to Greek inscriptions, of improperly giving antiquities to the German nobleman
Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, and of plotting to flee the country with antiquities in his possession. The affair led to a break between Pittakis and Rangavis, whose initial support for Pittakis turned into opposition as the situation evolved: the archaeological historian Nikolaos Papazarkadas has described the subsequent relationship between the two men as "rather complicated". Papazarkadas has argued that Pittakis's opposition to Ross's actions was personal rather than principled, pointing out that Pittakis made no protest against the copying of several thousand Greek inscriptions by French epigraphers from 1843 onwards, a project supported by the prime minister,
Ioannis Kolettis. In September 1836, on Ross's resignation, Neroulos prepared a draft decree, by which the Archaeological Service would have been reorganised, giving Pittakis responsibility for its excavation work while the philologist assumed charge of its academic works and Athanasios Iatridis oversaw its technical work. However, the proposal was considered too radical, and a royal decree of affirmed that the organisation of the Archaeological Service would continue unchanged, with the post of Ephor General unfilled. Pittakis was instead given the title of "Ephor of the Central Public Museum for Antiquities", referring to the collection of antiquities that he had assembled, first in the Church of the Megali Panagia and since 1835 in the Temple of Hephaestus. This made him the most senior archaeologist employed by the Greek Archaeological Service, and its head.
Archaeological Society of Athens On , Pittakis and the
philanthropist Konstantinos Bellios visited the Acropolis of Athens, where Bellios suggested to Pittakis the founding of a "Society for the Excavation and Discovery of Antiquities", with the purpose of restoring the monuments of the site. A proposal was submitted to Neroulos and Rangavis, now Neroulos's superior in the Ministry of Education; the organisation's founding documents were completed in the name of the
Archaeological Society of Athens on , and its foundation ratified by a royal decree of . Neroulos became the society's first president, with Rangavis as its secretary and Pittakis a member of its ephorate (board of overseers). Where Rangavis, Neroulos and Bellios were wealthy
Phanariots (a class of mostly-wealthy Greek merchants from
Istanbul, who had enjoyed special privileges in the administration of the Ottoman Empire), Pittakis was unusual in the new society in being both Athenian and of a humble background, a factor which created tension between him and the other elites of the society. The Society held its first meeting on , in the Parthenon. The Archaeological Society aimed to support the
Greek Archaeological Service, which had minimal financial and human resources, in conserving, studying and excavating the monuments of Greece. Along with Rangavis, Pittakis launched and edited the periodical
Archaeological Journal, which remains one of the society's main publications . Rangavis soon resigned as co-editor, leaving Pittakis as effectively the sole writer of the journal until 1860. From 1837, Pittakis, assisted by the Swiss sculptor
Heinrich Max Imhof and Ross's former collaborators Schaubert and Laurent, carried out restoration work in the Archaeological Society's name on the Acropolis. His work at the site has been described as the beginning of a "large-scale purification project", aimed at the removal of all of the Acropolis's post-classical remains. Throughout 1837–1840, he reconstructed the cella| of the Erechtheion, a building he described as having "fallen down", using modern bricks to replace areas of fallen stonework. He also extended the height of some collapsed columns and rearranged surviving fragments of the building to emphasise the best preserved. During the reconstruction, one of the south porch's
caryatids, which had fallen during the fighting of the War of Independence, was found and returned to its
plinth. Pittakis also excavated the building, down to the floor level of its phase as a Christian church (between approximately the sixth and the fifteenth centuries), uncovering tombs in the southern part and a cistern in the western area. On , he wrote to the Ministry of Education, proposing that a royal decree be issued to dramatically expand the powers of the state to protect antiquities and prosecute those damaging them, but his letter was never acted upon. From 1841, he began to collaborate with Rangavis on the restoration of the
Parthenon, having previously excavated its Portico| in the late 1830s. Between 1841 and 1844, they rebuilt parts of the and restored part of the north and south colonnades. As he had in the Erechtheion, Pittakis reinforced part of the Parthenon's north side with a large brick wall. He ordered casts from the
British Museum to replace the Parthenon sculptures taken by Elgin, placing them directly onto the temple itself. Pittakis intended to rebuild the entire north colonnade, but was prevented from doing so by lack of funds. On behalf of the Archaeological Society, he excavated at
Mycenae in 1841, clearing the approach to the
Lion Gate and making a tentative exploration of the
tomb known as the
Tomb of Clytemnestra. In 1842, Pittakis was placed in charge of all excavation on the Acropolis of Athens. On , following the resignation of Rangavis from the Archaeological Society, his duties were taken on by , the society's vice-secretary. On , Pittakis announced to the society that he knew of a plot of land in the neighbourhood of
Vrysaki, the area of the
Ancient Agora of Athens, which he believed to contain significant antiquities, including the remains of the bouleuterion| (the ancient city's assembly building) and the temples known as the metroon| and the Tholos (Athens)|. At his instigation, the society sold shares in the
National Bank of Greece to raise 12,000 drachmas to buy the plot, which became known as the
Psoma House after its former owner, named Louisa Psoma. Pittakis led the excavation, assisted by the society's archaeologists
Panagiotis Efstratiadis and D. Charamis. Although the excavation furnished several ancient inscriptions, published by Efstratiadis in three volumes, it failed to uncover the promised ancient monuments; the archaeologist found in 1910 that the antiquities discovered at the house were associated with the late Roman
walls of the city. Rangavis requested permission to study the inscriptions found at the Psoma House, which the Archaeological Society refused. At the society's elections of , Pittakis was elected to succeed Vyzantios, who had been formally appointed as secretary on . At the suggestion of the German classical scholar
Friedrich Thiersch, the society established a committee to report on the state of the Erechtheion, which included Pittakis, Efstratiadis and the society's president . The society's financial situation in this period was precarious, partly owing to its purchase of the Psoma House and the society's erection of a marble commemorating its benefactors. In April 1854, on the outbreak of the
Crimean War, British and French troops
occupied the Piraeus with the aim of preventing Greece from assisting the
Russian Empire against Ottoman Turkey. The occupation led to an outbreak of
cholera, which lasted from June 1854 to January 1855 and killed around 3,000 people, including the Archaeological Society's president,
Georgios Gennadios. The situation exacerbated the Archaeological Society's financial troubles so greatly that it effectively ceased to exist until 1858, though Pittakis continued writing and publishing the
Archaeological Journal. Between 1851 and 1858, in the judgement of Petrakos, Pittakis was effectively the sole figure in both the Archaeological Society and Greek archaeology. When Pittakis wrote to the Ministry of Education in October 1855, informing them of Gennadios' death and requesting approval to call a meeting to reconstitute the society, he received no response. In 1858, the Minister for Education,
Charalampos Christopoulos, asked Pittakis to reform the society and hold elections for new officials. These took place in the second half of the year: Pittakis was elected as secretary, a position which he handed over the following year to
Stefanos Koumanoudis. On , Pittakis was elected as vice-president of the society.
Ephor General of Antiquities (1843–1863) . The Parthenon mosque, demolished by Pittakis, is visible in the centre.|alt=Painting of a Greek temple, with a small mosque inside. In 1843, Pittakis was appointed to the post of Ephor General of Antiquities, which had been unfilled since Ross's resignation in 1836. His salary, as recorded in 1859, was 400 drachmas a month, slightly more than the 350 paid to a professor at the University of Athens and almost double the 250 previously paid to Ross. One of his first actions, in 1843, was to complete the demolition of the eighteenth-century
Parthenon mosque, which had been partially destroyed during the War of Independence: Ross had begun this work in 1835, but been forced to stop by a lack of heavy equipment. Pittakis continued to curate Athens's archaeological collections, writing an 1843 guidebook in which he claimed that around 400 of the 615 objects exhibited in the Temple of Hephaestus had been collected "as a result of [his] endeavour and passion". He also continued to excavate on the Acropolis, completing in 1843–1844 with Rangavis the restoration of the
Temple of Athena Nike, and uncovering two portions of the Parthenon frieze in 1845. He returned to the Temple of Athena Nike in 1846–1847 to install casts replacing parts of its frieze, which had been removed and taken to the British Museum. In 1844, the prime minister, Kolettis – possibly encouraged by Rangavis – wrote a report to King Otto in which he criticised Pittakis for what he described as his negligent and unmethodical work, particularly on the Parthenon. Kolettis also condemned Pittakis's administration of the
Archaeological Journal, which he claimed had made Greece "the laughing-stock of all archaeologists". The
Journal had earlier been criticised in the German press for delays in its publication; in July 1843, its publication ceased altogether, and would not resume until 1852. One of Pittakis's priorities was to protect the antiquities on the Acropolis, which he had previously described as an "archaeological garden", from looting and damage. He hired watchmen to ensure that none of the site's scattered, fragmentary remains were picked up by visitors. As Ross had before him, Pittakis concentrated his efforts on those fragments that showed signs of carving, or which bore inscriptions: other pieces were often recycled as part of improvised repairs to the Acropolis's monuments, or sold to visiting tourists. Between 1847 and 1853, he arranged for archaeological fragments scattered around the site to be collected, fixed into plaster and built into so-called "walls" or "panels" (). He established additional collections of antiquities in the major monuments of the site, as well as in cisterns and cellars, most of which were in locked storerooms to which only he had keys, and to which nobody was permitted access except in his presence. A substantial problem was the habit of visitors, especially sailors from the harbour of Piraeus, of chipping away pieces from the ancient structures, particularly the Erechtheion: to combat this, Pittakis had the whole temple clad in a protective layer of stone. By 1850, there were ten secure locations on the Acropolis in which antiquities were stored, though scattered sculptural remains continued to be found around the site into the 1870s. ), photographed From 1850, Pittakis undertook large-scale restoration work in and around the Propylaia. That year, he cleared and partially reconstructed the steps approaching the monument. Pittakis enlisted
Charles Ernest Beulé, an archaeologist of the
French School at Athens, to assist with the removal of medieval and modern structures from the remaining parts of the Propylaia in 1852. Beulé, against the prevailing scholarly opinion at the time, believed that
Mnesikles, the architect of the Propylaia, had originally constructed a second gateway. He secured Pittakis's blessing as well as support from
Alexandre de Forth-Rouen, the French ambassador to Greece, to investigate his hypothesis. On , the excavators discovered additional steps leading towards the gate, and by it had become clear that they had found the edge of a fortified wall around the Acropolis, and within it a late Roman gateway, which became known as the
Beulé Gate. The site was visited by King Otto and
Queen Amalia, and the discovery made Beulé's scholarly reputation. Towards the end of the excavation, Beulé used explosives to blast through a particularly difficult block of mortar – a decision criticised by contemporary archaeologists, as well as the Greek newspapers, one of which had previously accused Beulé of wanting to blow up everything on the Acropolis. Pittakis, who had been watching the operation, was almost struck by a fragment of the debris which pierced his hat: reports circulated in the aftermath that he had been killed. In 1854, Pittakis reconstructed the western part of the
podium of the on the Propylaia's north-eastern side, which was in danger of collapsing. During his time as Ephor General, Pittakis excavated on the island of
Anafi, recording monuments and collecting inscriptions. He advocated for the demolition of the
Frankish Tower, a medieval fortification built into the Propylaia, which would eventually be demolished in 1874. Between 1856 and 1860, he carried out further clearing on the Acropolis in preparation for the construction, which would eventually begin in 1865, of what became the
Old Acropolis Museum. At this point, he considered the excavation of the Acropolis complete, since the excavations had reached
bedrock in the 'main' area between the Parthenon, the Erechtheion and the Propylaia, and most of the post-classical structures on the site had been removed. He also excavated in Athens's lower town, including the
Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1848–1858, in which he found
calcined remains of pieces of cedar wood, which have been taken as evidence for the odeon's original wooden roof. The excavations of the odeon uncovered a large bomb, which was interpreted as a remnant of the artillery fired by
Venetian forces commanded by
Francesco Morosini during his
siege of the Acropolis in 1687. In 1860, Pittakis edited his final edition of the
Archaeological Journal, in which he claimed to have published a total of 4,158 inscriptions, "freely and for no compensation … merely moved by my yearning desire for the ancestral relics … [for] the common benefit and the dissemination to the ends of the world of every Greek letter, for the sake of Greek glory". The later part of Pittakis's career as Ephor General saw the discovery, in 1861, of the
Kerameikos cemetery; the excavations which took part here under Pittakis have been described as "random". His health began to fail in 1863; he wrote to the Minister of Education, who oversaw his work, on , asking for a twenty-day leave of absence. He wrote again on to say that he was no longer physically able to climb the Acropolis of Athens, which he claimed to have done up to four times a day for the past thirty-three years. Finally, on , he wrote to request an office facing the sun, complaining that his office, at the back of the ministry building, was "full of impurities and stench" and that he would not be able to work in it through the winter, "if God grant[ed him] to live out the year". Parts of this final letter are illegible owing to Pittakis's increasing weakness and deteriorating handwriting. Pittakis died in Athens on 1863. Rangavis, with whom he had quarrelled over his approach to restorations and over his handling of the Naval Records affair, delivered the eulogy at his funeral, in which he praised Pittakis's devotion to the classical past and did much to establish his reputation as a patriot and protector of Greece's antiquities. He was succeeded as Ephor General by Efstratiadis, with whom he had worked on the excavation of the Psoma House and on the committee reporting on the Erechtheion. Pittakis's son, a judge by the name of Plato, published Rangavis's eulogy alongside another offered by Philippos Ioannou, who, along with Rangavis, had been Pittakis's comrade in the . ==Nationalism==