There was probably no access between the two buildings, as paintings and photographs from the nineteenth century show the tower's entrance above ground, on the second floor of the eastern face, some 6 metres (20 ft) above the architrave of the Propylaia.

[6][7] Some photographs also show a ground entrance on the western side, suggesting that the lower portion of the tower was separate from the upper floors, and used as a prison or storage room.

The north side of the tower had a small, square turret that projected from the wall:[6] according to a 1908 history by the medievalist William Miller, this could be used to light a beacon visible from Acrocorinth in the Peloponnese.

[13] However, according to medievalist Peter Lock, the tower "might equally be ascribed" to the first dynasty of Frankish dukes of Athens, the 13th-century de la Roche family, who also had a residence on the site, of which no details are known.

[20] Klenze, despite his general determination to remove post-classical remains from the Acropolis, favoured the preservation of the medieval structures near the Propylaia for what he considered their "picturesque" appeal, a view shared by Carl Wilhelm von Heideck, a member of Otto's regency council.

[21] The proposal to remove the tower was also opposed in France, including by the scholar Jean Alexandre Buchon, where it was seen as a source of pride through its perceived association with Frankish crusaders, and as a symbol of the continuity between ancient Greek and modern French culture.

[23] The archaeologist Kyriakos Pittakis was an early advocate of demolition, while foreign visitors labelled the tower a "barbarous sentinel" and complained that it interrupted the view of the Parthenon.

[2] In the Greek press, the architect and academic Lysandros Kaftanzoglou compared the tower, which he considered of Turkish origin and called "barbarian", with the droppings of birds of prey.

17 June], he proposed to the General Ephorate of Antiquities that he fund the demolition of the Frankish Tower,[27] which he considered would cost him 12,000 francs: he explained this decision as a "service to science", though it has also been characterised as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Greek authorities and expedite his requests for an archaeological permit.

[25] Panagiotis Efstratiadis, a prominent member of the society and the head of the Greek Archaeological Service, obtained ministerial approval for the request, and oversaw Schliemann's payment of an initial 4,000 drachmas to Martinelli on 1 July [O.S.

The archaeological historian Fani Mallouchou-Tufano has suggested that the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875, in which nationalist rebellions had arisen in parts of the Balkans still under Ottoman rule, played a role in encouraging Greeks to see the removal of the post-classical structure as a means of reinforcing their "national confidence and certainty".

[32] The demolition drew considerable criticism at the time; the French poet Théophile Gautier called the tower an "integral part of the Athenian horizon".

[33] The historian of Frankish Greece, William Miller, later called it "an act of vandalism unworthy of any people imbued with a sense of the continuity of history"[34] and "pedantic barbarism".

[28] Kaftanzoglou and his colleague Stefanos Koumanoudis, however, writing on behalf of the Archaeological Society of Athens, defended the demolition as "the restoration of the Greek character of the shining face of the Acropolis, pure and unsullied by anything foreign".