How did it smell in a 19th century Parisian café? What fragrances did the elegant women wear 300 years ago? And how did it smell on the Waterloo battlefield? An interactive “odor explorer” now answers these and other questions, which researchers from six countries have created in the “Odeuropa” project. To do this, use a AI system to evaluate references to scents from tens of thousands of pictures and documents. The project has now been awarded the European Heritage Award.
Smells cause deep memories and feelings in us, they let the past come alive – for example from our early childhood. But what about the smells that shaped everyday life 100 or more years ago? People in historical times also perceived the typical fragrance notes in their surroundings and were influenced by them and maybe even shaped. But as it really smelled 150 years ago in a café on Montmartre, in a noble salon or on a theater of war, we can only guess today.
Odor information from 400 years
However, paintings and drawings or written documents from these times can provide information about the smell history. Because in them people already described smell impressions or depicted fragrance sources – from the fragrant flower to the dung heap in the stable. This more, sometimes less subtle references to the smell world of the past has now systematically evaluated and interacted the European research project “Odeuropa” for the first time. The aim was to anchor smells and odor experiences as an essential component of the cultural heritage – as a means of arousing emotions, giving up history and creating multi -sensory connections to the past.
The team of historians, data scientists and AI specialists has trained an artificial intelligence to recognize odor-related objects and gestures in pictures and odor descriptions in text documents. In total, the researchers analyzed more than 43,000 historical pictures and 167,000 books in six European languages, which were created from 1600 to 1920. The first database for Europe, consisting of 2.5 million entries, emerged from all this data. An interactive web tool that “Odeuropa Smell Explorer“, It enables these odor data to be called up and browsing. Each“ nostril report ”-be it textual or visual-is presented in its original context: the book from which the quote comes from, or the painting that represents the source of odors.
Time travel by “nose witness”
The “Odeuropa Smell Explorer”, for the first time, allows you to immerse yourself deeply into past odor worlds. “This makes it a valuable resource for everyone who wants to understand how the past smelled and how odor experiences have been described and presented,” says the project’s website. “He is the first database that can be queried for the time being.” Specifically, these questions can be examined and answered, for example: Which olfactory objects and fragrant places are most often shown in historical paintings? Are fragrance words comparable to those in other European languages in Italian? Where could you smell zet or sulfur in the 18th century? And which fragrance notes preferred fine women of the turn of the century in their fragrance mixes?
In addition to the “Smell Explorer”, the researchers of the Odeuropa project also compiled an encyclopedia in odor history and olfactory heritage and a storytelling toolkit. The latter was developed to convey historical fragrance worlds in a very practical way in exhibitions and museums. The storytelling based on smells has already inspired new exhibitions and learning materials and was also presented in the EU Pavilion at the Expo 2025 in the Japanese Osaka. For its work, the research consortium, led by the Royal Dutch Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, has now received the European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award from the European Commission – the most prestigious award in Europe in the field of cultural heritage.
Source: Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Odeuropa Smell Explorer
