He was born at St Amand in the department of Cher, and received his education at Bourges. He was made professor of history at the Collège de Louis-le-Grand in Paris (1813) and in the Sorbonne (1817). His first major work was Histoire critique de l'établissement des colonies grecques (4 vols., 1815). He was superintendent of antiquities in the Bibliothèque at Paris (1819-48), and professor of archaeology at the Bibliothque (from 1826), a result of which may be seen in his Cours d'archéologie (1828). In 1829 he published his Monuments inédits, a work of great value at the time. His Peintures inédites (1836) and Peintures de Pompéi (1844), remained valuable documents for many years. He contributed to the Annali of the Roman Institute, the Journal des savants and the Académie des inscriptions. At his death, Raoul Rochette was perpetual secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts and a corresponding member of most of the learned societies in Europe.
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