He succeeded Prosper Mérimée as Inspector General of Historic Monuments and collaborated with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

He then studied architecture in the workshop of Henri Labrouste and at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1837.

[1] In 1864 land was purchased beside the Villa Eugénie in Biarritz on which to erect a chapel designed by Boeswillwald.

It incorporated an eclectic mix of Roman and Byzantine art with Hispano-Moorish elements from Seville and Granada.

[3] Boeswillwald produced a series of watercolor drawings of the soldiers of the First Empire in the years 1890–1891.