Everything about Nancy totally explained
|alt moy=212 m
|alt mini=188 m
|alt maxi=353 m
|hectares=1,501
|km²=15.01
|sans=105,400
|date-sans=2005
|dens=6,902
|date-dens=1999}}
Nancy (; archaic ; ) is a
city and
commune in the
Lorraine région of northeastern
France.
The city is the
préfecture (capital) of the
Meurthe-et-Moselle département. The metropolitan area (
aire urbaine) of Nancy had a population of 410,509 inhabitants at the 1999 census, 103,602 of whom lived in the city of Nancy proper (105,100 inhabitants in the city proper as of 2004 estimates).
History
The earliest signs of human settlement in the area date back to 800 BC. Early settlers were likely attracted by easily mined iron ore and a ford in the
Meurthe River. A small fortified town named Nanciacum (
Nancy) was built by
Gerard, Duke of Lorraine around 1050.
Nancy was sacked by Emperor
Frederick II in the 13th century, then rebuilt in stone over the next few centuries as it grew in importance as the capital of the
Duchy of Lorraine.
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was defeated and killed in the
Battle of Nancy in 1477.
With the death of Duke
Stanislas in 1766, the duchy became a French province and Nancy remained its capital. When the
région of Lorraine was created in the middle of the 20th century,
Metz was chosen as its capital instead of Nancy.
As unrest surfaced within the French armed forces during the
French Revolution, a full-scale mutiny took place in Nancy in later summer 1790. A few reliable units lay siege to the town and shot or imprisoned the mutineers.
Nancy was freed from
Nazi Germany by the
U.S. Third Army in September of 1944, during the
Lorraine Campaign of
World War II (see Battle of Nancy (1944)).
Geography
The neighboring communes of Nancy are:
Jarville-la-Malgrange,
Laxou,
Malzéville,
Maxéville,
Saint-Max,
Tomblaine,
Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, and
Villers-lès-Nancy.
Sights
The
Place Stanislas named after the king of
Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth and duke of Lorraine
Stanislaw Leszczynski, Place de la Carrière, and Place d'Alliance were added on the
World Heritage Sites list by the
UNESCO in 1983.
The "
École de Nancy", a group of artists and architects founded by the glassmaster and furniture maker
Émile Gallé, worked in the
Art Nouveau style at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. It was principally their work which made Nancy a centre of art and architecture that rivaled
Paris and helped give the city the nickname "Capitale de l'Est." The city still possesses many Art Nouveau buildings (mostly banks or private homes).
Furniture,
glassware, and other pieces of the decorative arts are conserved at the
Musée de l'École de Nancy, which is housed in the 1909 villa of
Eugène Corbin, a Nancy businessman and supporter of the Art Nouveau there.
The old city centre's heritage dates from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. The
cathedral of Nancy is a fine example of 18th century architecture. The surroundings of the train station are a busy commercial area.
There is also a
botanical garden in Nancy,
"Le Jardin Botanique". It is open from 10 am to 12 (noon), and from 2 pm to 5 pm on Mondays through Fridays. On Saturdays and Sundays it's open from 2 pm to 5 pm. It costs around 2.30
euros to enter, and has many different types of plants, including tropical, and many other wonderful types of plants and flowers.
There is also the aquarium and various other public gardens and places of interest including the Pépinière and Parc Sainte-Marie (public gardens); the
Musée de l'École de Nancy, the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée Lorrain amongst others.
Culture
At the turn of the 20th century, Nancy was a major centre of the
Art Nouveau style with millions being spent on the refurbishment of Place Stanislas which was opened April 2005 by Jacques Chirac.
It is the seat of the
Diocese of Nancy and the home of the
Opéra national de Lorraine.
Transport
Nancy is served by a '
tramway on tyres', in actual fact a
guided busway based on
Bombardier Transportation's
Guided Light Transit technology. It has suffered many incidents and malfunctions, but now works without significant problems. This system is also used in
Caen, and will be installed in the city of
Nijmegen.
Universities and colleges
This is a list of institutions of higher learning in Nancy.
Miscellaneous
N ray, which turned out to be a figment of local physicist
René-Prosper Blondlot's imagination, was named for Nancy.
Nancy's
archaic German name is
Nanzig, and a similar form
Nanzeg is still used in
Luxembourgish.
The motto of the city is
Non inultus premor, Latin for "No one touches me with impunity". This is very similar to the Scottish motto
Nemo me impune lacessit, and both are references to the thistle, which is a symbol of both
Scotland and
Lorraine.
Native sons and daughters
Nancy was the birthplace of:
Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (1565-1637)
Éric Rohmer (b. 1920), film director
Jacques Callot (c.1592-1635), baroque graphics artist, draftsman and printmaker
Paul Colin (1892 - 1985), poster artist
Louis Maimbourg (1610-1686), Jesuit and historian
Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor (1708-1765), duke of Lorraine and later Holy Roman Emperor
Jean François de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803), poet
Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802), portrait painter, pastelist, miniaturist, and engraver
Antoine Drouot (1774-1847), one of Napoleon's generals
Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896), author, critic, publisher, founder of the Académie Goncourt
Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville (1827-1910), historian and philologist
Émile Gallé (1846-1904), Art Nouveau artist
René-Prosper Blondlot (1849-1930), physicist, best remembered for his mistaken identification of N rays
Aimé Morot (1850-1913), painter
Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), mathematician, theoretical scientist and philosopher of science
Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934), Marshal of France
Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), historian
Henri Cartan (b. 1904), mathematician
Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), noted as the inventor of musique concrète
François Jacob (b. 1920), biologist
Pascal Dusapin (b. 1955), composer
Najoua Belyzel (b. 1981) singer
Matthieu Delpierre (b. 1981), footballer
Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855), painter
Lucien Weissenburger (1860-1929), architect
(François-)Emile André (1871-1933), architect
Arnaud Vincent (b. 1974), motorcycle racer
Hometown of these fictional characters
René François Artois ('Allo 'Allo)
René Artois ('Alllo 'Allo [Twinbrother of René François Artois])
Madame de Verquin A fictional libertine in Marquis de Sade's short story Florville and Courval.
Sister cities
- Newcastle, United Kingdom (since 1954)
- Liège, Belgium (since 1954)
- Karlsruhe, Germany (since 1955)
- Padua, Italy (since 1964)
- Kanazawa, Japan (since 1973)
- Qiryat Shemona, Israel (since 1984)
- Lublin, Poland (since 1988)
- Cincinnati, United States (since 1991)Further Information
Get more info on 'Nancy'.
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