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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The house at 50 rue de Strasbourg in Vichy is an Art Nouveau villa built at the very beginning of the 20th century, in a town renowned for its thermal baths. It stands out as one of the rare examples of modern style architecture in this seaside resort, where neo-classical facades dominate. Its owner and designer, Antoine Planchin, originally from Nancy – a major focus of Art Nouveau in France – has integrated elements characteristic of the movement: curved lines, wrought ironwork and stylized plant motifs.

The villa is organized on four levels, with a basement side street becoming ground garden side, a raised ground floor, and two floors, the last of which is arranged in the attic. The interior distribution reflects its initial use: seasonal rental for curists. The lobby serves a living room on the street side and a dining room opening onto a veranda, while the floor accommodates four bedrooms. The facade, marked by semicircular balconies and winding-shaped huisseries, contrasts with the classicism of doors and windows.

The exterior decorative details include wrought iron grilles with whipped motifs, hearts and lilac leaves, as well as floral bas-reliefs above the openings. Inside, the vestibule features a polychrome ceramic pavement, and the dining room a two-coloured marble fireplace decorated with ionic columns. The house, with its fence and roof, was inscribed in the Historic Monuments by order of 24 September 1987, highlighting its heritage value in a neighborhood otherwise dominated by classical architecture.

Built after 1904, the villa illustrates the influence of the École de Nancy, which Planchin inspired to create a functional and aesthetic building. Its fence wall, with its bayut and grid at the narrow ends, as well as the stained windows of the entrance door, reinforce its Art Nouveau character. Despite its stylistic isolation in the Victorian urban landscape, it bears witness to the opening of the city to the innovative artistic currents of the time.

Today, the house remains a preserved example of the adaptation of Art Nouveau to the bourgeois thermal habitat. Its inscription in the title of Historic Monuments guarantees the preservation of its most remarkable elements: facade, roof and fence, identified under the reference cadastral AM 20. Although its access to the public is not specified, its architecture continues to attract the attention of heritage lovers of the early twentieth century.

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