inscriptions. In 1828, he unsuccessfully petitioned Ioannis Kapodistrias, who had become Greece's first independent head of state in 1827, for an archaeological post. He returned to Athens, where he resumed his early work of collecting inscriptions, sending several to August Böckh for inclusion in the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. He gathered antiquities from the Church of Megali Panagia, which was built on the former site of Hadrian's Library. 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. In 1832, he 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 by Pittakis Byron's graffito of his own name on one of the columns of the Erechtheion. He was appointed 'sub-ephor' () of Central Greece, reporting to the Bavarian architect Adolf Weissenberg, in 1833, making him among the first native Greeks employed by the archaeological service. 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 'pinakotheke'. He also began to collect together some of the scattered antiquities from the site, many of which were the remains of bombardments during the Acropolis' two recent sieges. He also carried out the first excavations around the Parthenon, clearing its surroundings of medieval and early modern buildings, and recovering parts of the Parthenon frieze. On 18 August 1834, by a royal decree issued on the advice of the Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze, the Bavarian military garrison was dismissed from the Acropolis and the area declared an archaeological site. Despite Pittakis' 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 Ludwig Ross, a German scholar and 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. The dominance of non-Greek scholars in the excavation and conservation of Greek monuments provoked resentment from the