Nancy - St-Léon IX

Around 1050 Count Gerard, Duke of Lorraine, built a castle here called Nanciacum, from which the town was to develop. In 1218 troops of Emperor Frederick II., fighting Theobald I, Count of Champagne, pillaged and looted the town. Rebuilt and surrounded by a wall, Nancy was granted city rights in 1265 and became the capital of the duchy in the following decades.

In 1477, Charles the Bold of Burgundy failed in the Battle of Nancy in his attempt to seize the city - and died during the battle.

Nancy belonged to the Duchy of Lorraine and thus to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation until the 18th century. Finally, the Duchy of Lorraine came to the Kingdom of France in an exchange between the House of Habsburg and the French King in the 18th century. Louis XV awarded Lorraine in 1737 to the deposed Polish king, Stanislaus I Leszczyński, who ruled the duchy from Nancy as Duke of Lorraine. After his death, in 1766, Nancy and the duchy finally fell to the French crown.


The Church of St-Léon IX is a neo-Gothic Catholic parish church in Nancy

The erection was started in 1860, but the work was delayed by the Franco-Prussian War. Though in use already earlier, it was finally consecrated after the completion of the south tower in 1877.