We investigate the mediation of symmetry-forbidden atomic transitions using plasmonic nanostructures. We show that the excitation of the electric dipole-forbidden, quadrupole-allowed 6 2S1/2 − 5 2D5/2 transition in cesium may be enhanced by more than 6 orders of magnitude in the intense, inhomogeneous near field of a plasmonic nanoantenna. Using optical reciprocity, the enhancement can be understood to apply to spontaneous emission as well, allowing the fast and efficient optical detection of excited atoms.