The motto of the city is Non inultus premor, Latin for '"I am not injured unavenged"'[7]—a reference to the thistle, which is a symbol of Lorraine. Place Stanislas, a large square built between 1752 and 1756 by architect Emmanuel Héré under the direction of Stanislaus I of Poland to link the medieval old town of Nancy and the new city built under Charles III, Duke of Lorraine in the 17th century, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first square in France to be given this distinction.[8] The city also has many buildings listed as historical monuments and is one of the European centres of Art Nouveau thanks to the École de Nancy. Nancy is also a large university city; with the Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Brabois, the conurbation is home to one of the main health centres in Europe, renowned for its innovations in surgical robotics.

Nancy was occupied by German forces beginning in 1940 and renamed Nanzig. During the Lorraine Campaign of World War II, Nancy was liberated from Nazi Germany by the US Third Army in September 1944, at the Battle of Nancy. In 1988, Pope John Paul II visited Nancy. In 2005, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski inaugurated the renovated Place Stanislas, which was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.