Kyriakos Pittakis

Kyriakos Pittakis.
Kyriakos Pittakis (1798–1863) was a Greek archaeologist. The first Greek to serve as the head of the country's archaeological service, he carried out the conservation and restoration of monuments on the Acropolis of Athens. Largely self-taught as an archaeologist, he was one of the few native Greeks active in the field during the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Kingdom of Greece, playing an influential role in the early years of the archaeological service. A founding member of the Archaeological Society of Athens, he was prolific both as an excavator and as a writer, publishing by his own estimation more than 4,000 inscriptions. He has been praised for his extensive efforts to uncover and protect Greece's classical heritage, particularly in Athens and the adjacent islands, but criticised for his unsystematic and incautious approach. His reconstructions of ancient monuments often prioritised aesthetics over fidelity to the original, and were largely reverted after his death.