Afterwards an earthquake in 1493 destroyed the temple of Apollo and the village was abandoned. About 300 years later the village was resettled by Greeks who used the broken ancient buildings as quarries. When Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli visited the spot in 1446, it seems that the temple was still standing in great part, although the cella had been converted into a fortress by the Byzantines, but when the next European visitor, the Englishmen Jeremy Salter and Dr Pickering, arrived in 1673, it had collapsed. The Society of Dilettanti sent two expeditions to explore the ruins, the first in 1764 under Richard Chandler, the second in 1812 under William Gell. The French "Rothschild Expedition" of 1873 sent a certain amount of architectural sculpture to the Louvre, but no excavation was attempted until Emmanuel Pontremoli and Bernard Haussoullier were sent out by the French Schools of Rome and Athens in 1895. They cleared the eastern façade and partly the northern flank, and discovered inscriptions giving information about other parts. German excavations made between 1905 and 1913 revealed all of the incomplete Hellenistic temple of Apollo and some carved fragments that belonged to the earlier Archaic temple and to associated statues. After the Second World War the German Archaeological Institute recommenced the investigations at Didyma in 1962. From now on not only the temple of Apollo was explored but the whole area surrounding the temple. In this way some unknown buildings were discovered. The huge district with the Sacred Way north of the temple of Apollo was excavated by Klaus Tuchelt. There he found the supposed sanctuary of Artemis. In 1979 Lothar Haselberger discovered scratched drawings on the walls in the courtyard of the temple of Apollo. A closer examination brought the first ancient blueprint of at least two temples (Apollo and Artemis) back to life. Under Klaus Tuchelt and Peter Schneider the Sacred Way from Miletus was investigated, especially the area outside of the sanctuary of Apollo. They found some of the stations of the procession from Miletus to Didyma. In 2003 Andreas Furtwaengler took over the directorship of the excavation of Didyma. His explorations were concentrated on the Archaic period of the Apollo temple and its close surroundings. Helga Bumke succeeded him 2013. She began in 2001 the exploration of the disposal site of the debris from the Persian looting in 494 BC. Afterwards, also under her auspices, were the discovery of the Greek theatre in 2010/11 and during 2013 the foundations of the temple of Artemis and of another Hellenistic building, residing under a Byzantine chapel.