Something nouveau

We had arrived in Nancy after midday, and spent the afternoon leisurely strolling around the streets near to place Stanislas, soaking up the abundance of art nouveau architecture.

The reason Nancy is full of beautiful art nouveau examples is that in 1871 a number of patrons of the arts, industrialists and investors fled the areas annexed by the Germans after the Franco-Prussian war. They joined likeminded locals in Nancy to form and promote talented groups of artists, architects and designers. These included Emile Gallé, Louis Majorelle, Victor Prouvé, the Daum brothers, Jacques Gruber, Emile André, Lucien Weissenburger and many more, too numerous to list here. They produced original, extremely creative work using motifs inspired by their love of nature.

This photo is from the ‘ecole de Nancy’ - school of Nancy. I will share more on that later.

There was a beautiful blue sky, with quite a hot sun, as we approached the wide open doors of a very statuesque and quite intimidating looking church. We were cooled by the air spilling out through the doors. If it wasn’t for the huge doors being open we may not have gone in, but the blast of coolness enticed us in.

I took a quiet moment resting and absorbing the interior architecture and amazing carvings around the alter, whilst Brian wandered round enjoying taking some photographs.

As we headed back to the hotel to change for dinner we came across the place d’Alliance, a beautiful square of trees surrounding an ornate fountain. It was an area of calm, where people sat under the shade of the trees to shelter from the heat of the sun.