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 Read More …
The three big museums of Metz are all together in one complex, called La Cour d’or (The Golden Courtyard). The first is the archeology museum, which was built on the site of the ancient Roman baths that were excavated here starting in 1932. As in Saarbrücken, which is 60 km Read More …
When I go to art museums I am always glad to see paintings on themes that I ‘know’ because they have also been made into operas. In Nancy I was especially glad to come across a large canvas entitled “The Destruction of the Palace of Armide”, which vividly illustrates a Read More …
The Lorraine Museum (Musée Lorrain) is a regional museum located in two buildings just a short walk north of Place Stanislas in Nancy. The first of these buildings is the former palace of the Dukes of Lorraine, which now houses a large collection of paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, scientific instruments Read More …
Tower 46 (Tour 46 in French) is one of the three cannon towers that Vauban designed in 1687 for the three corners of his new city walls. Like the other two towers, this one has the shape of a pentagon and is built of pink sandstone and bricks. The lower Read More …
This traditional-looking house does not seem to have been predestined to serve as a museum of modern art, but that’s what it is. In the 19th century, the poet Léon Deubel (1879-1913) lived in this house for part of his childhood — apparently the only part of his childhood that Read More …
The old Château in Saint-Germain-en-Laye was used for decades as a hospital, a cavalry school, a caserne and a prison, and by the 1860s it was in terrible condition. The local council considered it a threat to public health and safety, and wanted to tear it down, but the Emperor Read More …
The fortifications in this model were designed by Vauban in the seventeenth century, but the topography was the same when Julius Caesar came through with his army in the year 58 BC. His description of Besançon (then known as Vesontio) is in Book 1 (Chapter 38) of his Commentarii de Read More …
One of the buildings in the Besançon Citadel is now used for the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation, dealing with the Second World War, when the Nazis and their collaborators ruled France. The museum provides “an in-depth and emotional portrayal of this dark period of history.” They say that Read More …
Just to your right as you enter the Citadel, in the long building known as the Front Royal, is the Musée Comtois, a regional ethnological museum which “tells the story of the people and landscapes that shaped Franche-Comté over recent centuries.” The name Franche-Comté means “Free County”, not because the Read More …