PARIS (Reuters)  .

More than 50 years after his death, art lovers can see sculptor Alberto Giacometti's Parisian studio exactly as he left it, right down to half-finished sketches and his ashtray.

The Giacometti Institute, due to open on June 26, contains dozens of paintings and sculptures, carefully preserved by his wife after he died in 1966, including fragile plaster artworks that have never been shown to the public.

The Institute contains a complete reconstruction of his studio, just down the road from its original location, in the Montparnasse district of Paris, an area known for being a thriving artistic hub in the middle of the 20th century.

The Giacometti Foundation, which is in possession of the majority of his work, decided to recreate the studio, as opposed to a museum, as Giacometti always insisted on the strong link between his work and the environment in which he made it.