Nancy invented Art Nouveau's French branch, and the École de Nancy left its glass and marquetry inside real houses rather than vitrines. Add a national opera on the main square, a dramatic centre in a tobacco factory and a volunteer arts house in the old town.
Gallé's glass, Majorelle's marquetry and Gruber's stained glass fill an 1890s villa on rue du Sergent Blandan. Open Wed–Sun 10:00–18:00; the aquarium room and the garden pavilion are the set pieces. Bus 122 from the centre.
The 1911 brasserie at 50 rue Henri Poincaré is a listed Art Nouveau room: Majorelle woodwork, Daum lamps, stucco garlands overhead. Oysters and choucroute at white-clothed tables, waiters in long aprons, service until 23:00.
Louis Majorelle's 1902 house, designed by Henri Sauvage, was the first fully Art Nouveau villa in France. Interiors reopened in 2020 after restoration: dining room, Gruber windows, the ironwork staircase. Timed entry only.
Three streets carry the movement's public face: the 1908 Chambre de Commerce on rue Henri Poincaré, the bank hall at 9 rue Chanzy with its Gruber glass dome, and Émile André's 1903 Maison Huot on quai Claude le Lorrain.
The upper galleries of the 1888 Salle Poirel host Nancy's temporary programme — Daum retrospectives, photography, contemporary painting. Open Wed–Sun 10:00–18:00, with a 900-seat concert hall on the floor below.
Sixty stalls sit under an iron frame of 1885: Munster from the Vosges, mirabelle preserves, pâté lorrain by the slice. Tuesday to Saturday 07:00–18:00. Eat standing at the oyster counter or carry a pâté out to the square.
Built in 1933 on rue Sainte-Catherine, it stacks a tropical aquarium of 60 tanks beneath a zoological gallery of 500 mounted animals, the cabinet-of-curiosities layout kept deliberately intact. Open 10:00–12:00 and 14:00–18:00.
The house on the north side of the square seats a thousand under a gilded ceiling and reopened in its current form in 1919. Season runs September to June: opera, the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique, and CCN ballet evenings.
The twin-towered gate of 1336 closes the top of Grande Rue, the medieval spine of the Ville-Vieille. Between it and Basilique Saint-Epvre work bookbinders, a luthier and antiquarians in ground-floor premises.
The 'rue gourmande' packs some twenty kitchens into two hundred metres between Place Stanislas and Saint-Epvre. Lorraine plates dominate: pâté lorrain in pastry, tête de veau, mirabelle tart. Most serve 12:00–14:00 only.
The Centre Dramatique National works out of a converted tobacco factory at 10 rue Baron Louis: brick halls, two stages and a bar. Programming leans on new French writing, with Sunday matinees. Season September to May.
A 16th-century house at 14 rue du Cheval Blanc, run by volunteers as an arts centre since 1981: rehearsal rooms, a gallery, a silkscreen workshop and a courtyard bar with concerts most Thursday to Saturday nights.