the gate. By the 19th century, knowledge of the gate's existence was lost. Excavation The gate is named for Charles Ernest Beulé, a French archaeologist and member of the French School at Athens. Beulé had joined the French School in 1849, and discovered the monument while excavating the approach to the Proplyaia in 1852, under the direction of Kyriakos Pittakis, the Greek Ephor General of Antiquities. The excavation has been called "the first of the great archaeological transformations" carried out on the Acropolis. The existence of a lower route to the Propylaia had become clear during the operations to clear and repair the monuments of the Acropolis following the end of the Greek War of Independence in 1829. In 1846, the French architect and archaeologist had begun to reveal the staircase leading up to it from the Beulé Gate, but archaeologists did not generally consider that there had been a second gateway. Titeux died in 1846 with his work on the staircase unfinished: in 1850, Pittakis completed the work of clearing it and partially reconstructing the steps. Pittakis enlisted Beulé to assist with the removal of medieval and modern structures from the remaining parts of the Propylaea in 1852. Beulé, against the prevailing scholarly opinion of his time, believed that Mnesikles, the architect of the Propylaia, had originally constructed a second gateway, and secured Pittakis' blessing as well as support from Alexandre de Forth-Rouen, the French ambassador to Greece, to investigate his hypothesis. On 4 May, the excavators discovered additional steps leading towards the gate, and by 17 May it had become clear that they had found the edge of a fortified wall around the Acropolis, and within it a gateway. The site was visited by King Otto and Queen Amalia of Greece, and the discovery made Beulé's scholarly reputation. Beulé left Athens for France at the beginning of June, returning in December to direct renewed excavations, now focused on the gate. On 24 December, work was temporarily halted when the Greek Minister for War ordered the excavators to leave, concerned that the excavation would destroy the Acropolis' defensive value in case of a future invasion; Beulé, with the support of the French embassy, was able to persuade the Greek authorities that the Acropolis had little military value anyway, and "would not hold out for twenty-four hours against an assault". When work was able to resume in 1853, the excavators