In this paper, the development of a flexure-based two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) nanomanipulator with modified differential lever displacement amplifier is conducted, which aims to break through the millimeter-range barrier. The kinetostatics modeling of the mechanism is established by using the pseudorigid body method, also the analytical modeling of lever is built up, as well as the dimension optimizations and the mechanism performance validations are conducted by using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm and the finite-element analysis method, respectively. With the consideration of hysteresis effect inherent in piezoelectric ceramics actuators, the hysteresis modeling is conducted by using the Preisach theory. To enhance the mechanism positioning performance, a novel feedforward nonlinear proportion-integration-differentiation control strategy composed by the nonlinear PID controller and the inverted Preisach hysteresis compensator is proposed in this paper. Finally, a series of closed-loop motion tracking experiments have been carried out. It indicates that the developed mechanism has achieved a millimeter workspace (3.1273 mm × 26.5°), nanometer scale motion resolution (40 nm), as well as a closed-loop positioning bandwidth of over 10 Hz. © 1996-2012 IEEE.