( Meet the artist who managed to bottle the scent of a person.) The self-guided tour, created in partnership with Odeuropa, includes a scratch-and-sniff map with various historical smells such as a perfumed pomander, a scented ball thought to ward off the plague. To further explore how scent connects the stories of class, gender, and the city’s colonial past, the Amsterdam Museum launched “ City Sniffers: A Smell Tour of Amsterdam’s Ecohistory” in 2022. Mapping “smellscapes”Ī walk through Amsterdam, the Netherlands, reveals a myriad of smells: the ever present stench of the canals, the mushroomy redolence of old books, and even a trace of fresh-off-the-griddle waffles. Beyond Europe, Bembibre sees opportunities to safeguard scents in underrepresented communities, ensuring that this intangible layer of cultural heritage is preserved for future generations. They’re also working with UNESCO to create policies around protecting scents. Odeuropa researchers are addressing this challenge through an “encyclopedia of smell heritage” that will be published in 2023. ( This ancient city is the perfume capital of India.)ĭue to climate change, some scents-and the stories attached to them-are at risk of being lost, she says. “ to the visually impaired or younger audiences who are looking for different experiences." “Smell can engage audiences that are not easy to engage through visual mediums,” says Bembibre. Photograph by Louisa Gouliamaki, AFP/Getty Images (Left) and Photograph by Louisa Goulimaki, AFP/Getty Images (Right) Nearby, visitors could sniff a carafe of rose-scented perfume inspired by the goddess. marble statue of Aphrodite was part of the 2018 exhibit “The Countless Aspects of Beauty,” at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. The scents for the exhibit, produced by the perfumers at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), blend chemically authentic reconstructions of odors with oils and other materials that won’t harm the artworks.Ī second-century A.D. To create the “Follow Your Nose” exhibit in 2022, Museum Ulm partnered with Odeuropa, a project that’s developing new methods-including artificial intelligence and sensory mining tools-to identify and preserve Europe’s heritage smells. Reconstructing scents from the past isn’t easy. Experts are now pushing to preserve and protect smells as intangible pieces of cultural heritage-and inviting travelers to experience how complex odors can tell stories about forgotten places, traditions, and changing environments in nature. Though scents are powerful time machines, olfactory history has been largely overlooked. “Our experience of scent is inherently emotional and visceral because of this neural organization.” “This makes the sense of smell really unique with respect to how we experience the world around us,” says Herz. Scent is the only sense that is directly linked to the memory and emotional learning centers of the brain, says Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist at Brown University and an expert on the psychological science of smell. By pairing artworks depicting odorous things-flower gardens, a perfume ball, or a table full of food-with reconstructed scents, the cultural center hopes to further immerse patrons in its collection.Ī growing number of museums, hotels, and fragrance experts are offering smell-based adventures to help travelers connect more deeply with destinations. It’s all part of a “ Follow Your Nose” tour at Museum Ulm, in Germany. Thanks to hand-held scent diffusers these tourists are getting a whiff of smoke and sulfur to evoke the fiery gates of hell depicted in the Renaissance artwork. A dozen travelers gather around Martin Schaffner’s 16th-century painting “Christ in Limbo,” and take a deep breath.
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