Nancy Is Full Of Surprises

Nancy welcomed us with warm summer weather, parks of all sizes, and extensive Art Nouveau architecture. We fell in love with both the botanical garden and the art museum. Nancy has a canal, a river, a man-made beach, and plenty of hills around that offer area views. We also found some great street art, something that’s lacking in most French cities. It was an eclectic mix that melded together perfectly. We were both surprised by how much we enjoyed Nancy. 

The city of Nancy has a population of just over 100,000 people, making it the 41st largest in France. However it’s surrounded by several other cities, combining to form a metro area of approximately 500,000, which is the 16th largest. We mostly explored within the city, but also found a couple of great things in the neighboring villes, like the standout botanical garden. It’s also an easy train ride to Metz, which is a similar size and made for a great day trip.

Surprisingly, Nancy does not have a car-free downtown, which is a staple of almost every French city of similar size. It’s still pedestrian-friendly, and there are a handful of streets that are pedestrian-only, but there’s no central downtown area that’s devoid of vehicle traffic like we encountered in most of our other stops. The closest Nancy comes is the large Stanislas Square, which is a wide open space surrounding a statue with restaurants and shops on the outskirts.

Nancy was one of the centers of the Art Nouveau movement in France at the beginning of the 20th century. At its core, the concept of Art Nouveau is incorporating natural forms like plants and flowers into everyday architecture and design. This results in lots of smooth curves and colorful stained glass on many buildings throughout town. Some of the influence is subtle, but there are traces everywhere if you’re looking for it, which we were.

Musée de l’École de Nancy

The best place to experience all that Art Nouveau has to offer is at the Museum of the Nancy School. The Nancy School is a group of artisans and designers that dedicated themselves to the Art Nouveau movement, and their work is concentrated in this house museum. This stunning residence is jam packed with ornate and intricate building materials, furniture, glassware, and fixtures. Each and every corner of the dozen rooms in this house was crafted with attention to style and detail. I don’t normally care too much about furniture (considering that I own none), but the woodwork on display was mesmerizing. I spent a lot of time enthralled with the extremely intricate designs that must’ve taken forever to craft. 

The house is surrounded by a garden area that has been planted with local flora that was used as inspiration for many of the pieces inside. We were able to walk around and see the plants that correspond to the creations indoors. It was a very nice touch. There were also a couple of outbuildings that followed the Art Nouveau style as well.

Villa Marjorelle

The Villa Marjorelle is the former residence of furniture designer Louis Majorelle, one of the leaders of the Art Nouveau movement. It’s a similar experience to the Museum of the Nancy School, albeit on a smaller scale. It was a nice second helping of interesting architecture, different room arrangements, and stained glass. 

Musée De Beaux Arts

The Nancy Fine Arts Museum was a solid mix of modern and classical art, sometimes displayed right next to each other. While there were several works from noted artists like Peter Paul Reubens and Raoul Dufy, there was a strong focus on local painters as well. We were introduced to artists Francis Gruber and Émile Friant and enjoyed several of their works. 

The museum also has a whole floor of artistic glassware from the local Daum glass factory, founded by Jean Daum in 1878 and later bequeathed to his two sons. The Daum family were creators of original and prominent works using state of the art techniques that spread throughout Europe. Their style was mainly Art Nouveau, but as business was starting to decline in the 1960s, they decided to send out a call to artists around the world to come design innovative glassware at their factory. Several did answer the call, including Salvador Dalí, who collaborated with them to bring his Surrealistic style to the world of color-glass sculpture.

Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Nancy

On the far west side of town is the Sacred Heart Basilica. While there were several large churches in Nancy, this was the best one. This grand worship building has all of the high ceilings, stained glass, and interesting architecture that we expected. But what it didn’t have were other people. We visited on a Saturday afternoon in the summer and had the entire place to ourselves for the 20 minutes we were there. There were no other visitors. There wasn’t even a worker! It was a little strange, but also quite peaceful. That was a definite surprise and a first for us. 

Jardin Botanique Jean-Marie Pelt

This absolutely massive botanical garden was easily one of the highlights of our stay. Located next door in Villers-lès-Nancy, the Jean-Marie Pelt Botanical Garden sprawls up the hillside providing great views and lots of open space. The expansive grounds have a dozen different sections grouping local regions, alpine areas, a bamboo forest, and an ornamental vegetable garden. There were several interesting plots showcasing crops that were cultivated in different historical eras with informational boards describing (in French) the evolution of farming over human history.

We visited near the height of dahlia season, and their displays were incredible. For the second time in our lives, we were able to enjoy a dedicated dahlia garden. This one was much larger than the first one we found in Lille. It had many more plants and lots of great variety. The bees were so happy and so were we.

In addition to all of the outdoor space, there is a conglomerate of multiple large greenhouses. These 7 different environments showcase jungle plants, desert succulents, carnivorous plants, edible plants, and others. It had some amazing specimens, including probably the nicest agave I’ve ever seen. It is definitely one of the best botanical gardens we’ve ever visited. We were both blown away at how amazing it was.

Laxou Lanes 

Laxou is a small hilly suburb directly to the west of Nancy. The ville is home to about 15,000 people. Carved in between the backyards of houses on the hillside are “streets” that I call the Laxou lanes. Some of the lanes are just a block or two long, and some are long paths that have multiple intersections. These narrow lanes allow access to both backyard and standalone garden plots. Most of these gardens are somewhat unkempt, filled with fruit trees and wildflowers. Some are more cultivated, with large vegetable gardens and flowers. No matter what type of garden, it seemed like every house in this area had one and the Laxou lanes allowed us to enjoy them all. It’s a very peaceful area to stroll through.

Among these pathways we encountered several cats and what we thought was a snake, but it wasn’t a snake at all. It turned out to be a legless lizard! (It was probably a slow worm, but it’s hard to know for sure.) Unlike a snake, the legless lizard has eyelids and ear holes, but does not have a forked tongue nor can it unhinge its jaw. Despite looking similar, they are not all that closely related. That was a new one for us.

Graffiti Factory

On the east side of Nancy is an abandoned factory complex that’s been turned into an officially sanctioned spot for graffiti and street art. With plenty of space for artists to express themselves, there’s no shortage of interesting artwork. I thought the sprawling complex was a great alternative to the classical French art styles. We found a nice variety and plenty of fun pieces.

Day Trip To Metz

Metz is a similarly sized city just to the north of Nancy. Metz pinged our radar because it has an outpost of the Centre Pompidou, which is the world class modern and contemporary art museum in Paris. We strongly considered spending these 4 weeks in Metz instead of Nancy, but we went with where we found the better apartment. It’s only about 40 minutes by train between them, so it’s the perfect distance for a day trip.

It turns out that the Centre Pompidou Metz is almost as spectacular as its parent museum. This large building holds thought-provoking art on several floors in a very unique exhibition space. Lots of variety and plenty of original ideas were spread throughout. It was pretty incredible and we spent several hours there. I would absolutely add it to any list of the best museums that we’ve been to over the last year.

The other main attraction that we were able to catch in Metz was the Metz Cathedral. It’s a grand classical cathedral with very high ceilings and somewhat ridiculous amounts of stained glass. A portion of that stained glass was designed by Marc Chagall and in typical Chagall-fashion, it’s very vivid and colorful. The church is massive and packed with detailed religious art. It is a very impressive building. 

Where We Stayed

We rented a one bedroom apartment on the far west side of town. The layout was unique in that our building had 4 other apartments above us, but ours had exclusive use of the backyard and a sunroom that stuck out behind the building. The yard had a lot of bird activity in the mornings, which was a nice way to start the day. The apartment also had air conditioning, which helped immensely during our first few days in Nancy when the temperatures were approaching 100F (37C). It cooled off after that and we never used it again, but it was sure nice initially.

What We Spent

We splurged a little bit for our air conditioned apartment which cost us $1909.25 for the 28 nights. We also went to the dentist for our routine cleanings, the doctor once, and Katie re-upped her supply of contact lenses. This extra medical spending along with a day trip to Metz made Nancy one of our more expensive stops, although the day-to-day pricing was pretty reasonable. In total we spent $3342 during our time in Nancy. Adding in our monthly bills for health insurance and MLB.tv, our grand total spent came to $3585, or $128/day.

Overall we liked Nancy a lot more than we thought that we were going to. I was expecting it to be just your average nice French city, but it turned out to have so much going on. The massive botanical garden and the Nancy School museum were both top notch. All of the Art Nouveau architecture that was scattered throughout the city made walking around great. There were hills to climb with lanes to explore and viewpoints to seek. There were river and canal paths to stroll too. We had a lot of fun exploring just about everywhere we went. Nancy was definitely a pleasant surprise.