Nancy carries a thousand years of contested frontier history: a fortified ducal seat, the 1477 battle that broke Burgundy, an exiled Polish king's golden squares, and the annexation of 1871 that filled the city with refugees from Alsace-Moselle.
The oldest surviving structure in Nancy, built around 1336 as the northern gate of the medieval wall. Its twin round towers served as a prison into the 19th century; the Cross of Lorraine and thistle emblems were carved in 1463 after Duke René II's reign began.
Founded in 1477 by René II in thanks for defeating Charles the Bold. The Ducal Chapel holds the tombs of the Dukes of Lorraine, including the recumbent effigy of Philippa de Gueldre carved by Ligier Richier around 1548, one of the great works of Lorraine sculpture.
A memorial cross by the Étang Saint-Jean marks where Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was found dead in the ice after his defeat on 5 January 1477. The battle ended Burgundian ambitions to link Flanders and Switzerland and reshaped the map of Europe.
A neo-Gothic basilica of 1864-1871 raised on the site of a church documented since the 11th century, the parish of the medieval old town. Its 87-metre spire, Bohemian stained glass and Austrian-donated fittings reflect Nancy's Habsburg-Lorraine connections.
Built in 1598 under Duke Charles III as part of the bastioned defences of the new town, this gate survived the demolition ordered after the 1633 French occupation. The rusticated stonework and Renaissance pilasters show Italian military engineering imported to Lorraine.
The 1738-1741 rococo church by Emmanuel Héré that holds the tomb of Stanislas Leszczyński, twice king of Poland and last duke of Lorraine, alongside that of his wife Catherine Opalińska. The heart of his daughter Marie Leszczyńska, queen of France, is here too.
Housed in the villa of patron Eugène Corbin, the collection documents how the 1871 annexation of Alsace-Moselle drove industrialists and craftsmen west to Nancy, fuelling an economic and artistic boom. Open Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00.
Nancy sat 30 km from the German frontier after 1871 and was shelled by long-range artillery and bombed from the air throughout 1914-1918. The interwar memorial here records the civilian and military dead of a city that lived on the front line.
Charles III laid out this planned quarter from 1588 on a strict rectilinear grid — one of the earliest Renaissance new towns north of the Alps. The 16th-century plots and later 18th-century facades let you read three centuries of rebuilding on a single street.
The macaron recipe here descends from the Dames du Saint-Sacrement, Benedictine nuns who sold the biscuits to survive after the Revolution dissolved their convent in 1793. The shop on Rue Gambetta has traded the same formula since 1793.
Created in 1765 on the site of the ducal nursery gardens and old bastions, the park was opened to the public by Stanislas's administration. The 19th-century bandstand, rose garden and Rodin's statue of Claude Lorrain trace its evolution as a civic space.
Nancy's brewing industry grew from the 1871 influx of Alsatian brewers and once counted dozens of maltings. The Saint-Sébastien quarter keeps the covered market of 1880 and industrial-era facades among post-war rebuilding after the 1944 fighting.