Jarville-la-Malgrange is a suburb that borders directly on the southern edge of Nancy, in the Grand Est region of France.

Like most European towns, Jarville-la-Malgrange has a monument listing the men who were senselessly massacred (this is not the way it is worded on the monument) in the two ‘World Wars’ of the 20^th century.

The name Jarville-la-Malgrange looks like it should mean ‘Jar City of the Evil Barn’, which doesn’t make much sense, but I haven’t been able to find any better explanation. (Perhaps some local person can help with this?)

• Update: Many thanks to The French opera blogger Jean-Louis Dubois (“toutloperaoupresque”), who suggested that the name Jarville might be from ancient Roman times. “Indeed, the Roman ‘Villa’ meant the ‘farm’ and Jarville could have a distant origin: Jar(us) Villa, the farm of Mr. Jarus…”
• Another update: Many thanks also to the German blogger Sebastian (“zeitgeiststories”), who found a French press report with this explanation of the name Malgrange: “At the end of the 16th century, the duchess of Lorraine, being of Calvinist religion, celebrated the Protestant rites in a barn in the proximity of her castle. The inhabitants of Jarville, being Catholics, were shocked, and named the barn this way: evil barn.”
  For more details, see the comments at the end of this post.

City Hall of Jarville-la-Malgrange

I think it would be fair to say that not much of any historical importance has happened in Jarville-la-Malgrange since the Battle of Nancy, which took place here on Sunday, January 5, 1477 and resulted in the death of one of the commanders, Charles le Téméraire (= Charles the Bold), the Duke of Burgundy.

Although I have never read much about the life of Charles le Téméraire, I do know that after his death his remains were buried and reburied in different places, for obscure political reasons, until they finally ended up in the church Notre-Dame de Bruges in 1550. This is mentioned in the second chapter of the novel Bruges-la-Morte (= Bruges the Dead)  by Georges Rodenbach (1855-1898), a novel that today is remembered mainly as the inspiration for a major opera, Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) by the German composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957).

Museum of the History of Iron in Jarville-la-Malgrange

Since the iron industry used to be a mainstay of the economy in this part of France (the last iron ore mine ceased operations in 1997), it is appropriate that Jarville-la-Malgrange has a Museum of the History of Iron, now known as Le Féru des sciences (= The science enthusiast). I walked up to the museum from the city hall — an unpleasant walk along car-infested roads with ridiculously narrow sidewalks — only to discover that the museum was closed.

But I assume you will be better organized than I was and will look up the opening hours before you go. As of 2023, they are open Wednesday through Sunday mornings from 9:00 to 12:00 and afternoons from 14:00 to 18:00 (closed Mondays and Tuesdays), but you’d better check that on their website before setting off.

Also I suggest you walk up from the other side, for instance get off at the bus stop “Chateau de Montaigu” and walk up through the park — a longer but much more pleasant way to reach the museum.

My photos in this post are from 2015. I revised the text in 2023.

See more posts on Nancy, France.
See more posts on Museums in France (outside of Paris).