Nancy Audioguides

Place Stanislas in the heart of Nancy is one of the finest urban squares in Europe, and it was built between 1752 and 1756 by a man who had lost two kingdoms. Stanislaw Leszczynski, twice King of Poland and father-in-law of Louis XV, received the Duchy of Lorraine as a consolation and used it to commission architect Emmanuel Here to design something that would outlast his reign. The gilded iron gates, the rococo fountains, the pavilions at each corner - it earned a UNESCO World Heritage designation and you understand why the moment you walk into it.

Nancy had been a great medieval city before Stanislas arrived, capital of the Duchy of Lorraine since the 11th century, with a ducal palace and a Gothic town center still visible in the Vieille Ville.

But the city's second great cultural moment came around 1900, when Emile Galle and the designers of the Ecole de Nancy turned the city into the capital of French Art Nouveau. Galle's glass vases, with their botanical motifs and luminous layering, are in the Musee de l'Ecole de Nancy, and the style is visible across the city in doorways and interiors.