Nancy, France

The city of NANCY, on the River Meurthe, is justly famed for the magnificent place Stanislas, cited as a paragon of eighteenth-century Neoclassical urban planning. The city also has on offer some impressive examples of Art Nouveau furniture and glassware. For its spectacularly grand centre, Nancy has the last of the independent dukes of Lorraine to thank, the dethroned king of Poland and father-in-law of Louis XV, Stanislas Leszczynski. During the twenty-odd years of his office in the mid-eighteenth century, he ordered some of the most successful construction of the period in all France.