Mérimée had honed his bureaucratic skills in the Interior Ministry, and he understood the political and the financial challenges of the task. He approached his new duties methodically. He first organized a group of architects specialized and trained in restoration, and had the money that previously had been given to the Catholic Church for restoration transferred to his budget. On 31 July 1834, he set off on his first inspection tour of historic monuments, traveling for five months, describing and cataloging the monuments he saw. Between 1834 and 1852 he made nineteen inspection tours to different regions of France. The longest, to the Southeast and to Corsica, lasted five months, but most trips were shorter than a month. When he returned after each trip, he made a detailed report to the Ministry on what needed to be done. In addition, he wrote scholarly studies for journals of archaeology and history. His scholarly works included a survey of the religious architecture in France during the Middle Ages (1837) and of military monuments of the Gauls, Greeks and Romans (1839). Finally, he wrote a series of books for a popular audience about the monuments of each region, describing vividly a France that he declared was "more unknown than Greece or Egypt".