Musée de l’École de Nancy

When Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, thousands who refused germanization fled to Nancy, just 20 kilometers from the new border. The influx doubled the city’s population and transformed it into an artistic crucible. By 1901, displaced glassmakers, furniture designers, and industrialists had formed the École de Nancy—an Art Nouveau collective with a radical mission: marry art with mass production to make beauty accessible to all, not just Parisian elites. The only museum in the world devoted entirely to this movement opened in 1964, housed in patron Eugène Corbin’s former mansion.