Catalogue for Anne of Austria’s Summer Apartments

The Mark Pigott Lecture and Research Fund was established in 2010 by Mark C. Pigott, KBE, KSTJ, to support scholarly initiatives at the Louvre Museum. In 2025, the Fund has made possible the publication about the gallery and collection of L’appartement d’été de la reine Anne d’Autriche—The Summer Apartments of Queen Anne of Austria. Recently restored with the support of AFL, these apartments have long housed the Louvre’s permanent collection of antiquities, a tradition dating back to the museum’s creation in the late 18th century.

Commissioned in 1655 by King Louis XIV, who wished to convert an existing gallery into summer apartments for his mother Anne of Austria, the spaces were designed by architect Louis Le Vau and lavishly decorated in the grand Italian tradition by Italian painter Francesco Romanelli, sculptor Michel Anguier and the stucco worker Pietro Sasso. When the palace was transformed into a museum at the end of the 18th century, architect Jean-Arnaud Raymond repurposed the royal apartments into a gallery of antiquities. In the 19th century, his successor, Hector Lefuel, completed the suite of rooms with the creation of the Auguste Room.

This publication is especially timely, as these galleries will house the reimagined Roman trail and galleries.