Inside the Return of American Horror Story’s Coven-Era Witch Academy Set
The thirteenth season of American Horror Story revives Miss Robichaux’s Academy, the New Orleans boarding school for witches featured in Coven. Production designer Anu Schwartz says the bright, ornate interiors of the school were designed to contrast with a lavish penthouse that serves as the devil’s base. The new season airs on FX and streams on Hulu.
Season 13 brings back Miss Robichaux’s Academy, the witches’ school central to Coven. Production designer Anu Schwartz says its luminous, detailed rooms were meant to stand against the devil’s opulent penthouse, giving the season a visual good-versus-evil contrast.
The school’s exterior was represented by New Orleans’s Buckner Mansion, an 1856 Greek Revival home in the Garden District that remains private. Its Coven interiors were stage-built in New Orleans, then dismantled. For season 13, the crew recreated them, even finding a similar antique piano that required a specialist when it failed during a scene.
The return of Miss Robichaux’s could renew fan interest in the real Buckner Mansion and New Orleans’s Garden District, potentially boosting local tourism while raising privacy concerns for residents. Design-minded viewers may also take cues from the set’s ornate, gothic-glamorous interiors, influencing décor trends or Halloween aesthetics. For FX and Hulu, the nostalgic callback may strengthen engagement among longtime AHS viewers, though its broader cultural reach remains uncertain.