Quartier de la Gare

The solid, bourgeois buildings and broad avenues of the Quartier de la Gare, including rue Gambetta and av Foch, were constructed in the decades before WWI.

Built with the intention of Germanising the city by emphasising Metz' post-1871 status as an integral part of the Second Reich, its neo-Romanesque and neo-Renaissance buildings are made of dark-hued sandstone, granite and basalt, rather than the yellow-tan Jaumont limestone characteristic of French-built, neoclassical structures.The massive, grey-sandstone train station, completed in 1908, is decorated with Teutonic sculptures - some of them quite amusing - whose common theme is German imperial might; it could detrain 20,000 troops and their equipment in just 24 hours. The massive main post office, built in 1911 of red Vosges sandstone, is as solid and heavy as the cathedral is light and lacy.