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What did Europe’s ancient past smell like? To one anonymous author, Amsterdam was “a beautiful virgin with a smelly breath,” while the French author Albert Camus wrote of “the breath of stagnant waters, the smell of dead leaves soaking in the canal and the funeral scent arising from the barges loaded with flowers.”
The descriptions are among many highlighted by the EU-funded ODEUROPA project’s three years of research into the often overlooked history of scent. The role of smells in historical contexts has been largely neglected, and despite growing interest in multisensory experiences, museums lack the necessary tools and data to explore the role of aromas in cultural heritage.
ODEUROPA embarked on a mission to help us reconnect with olfactory knowledge buried deep in archives, manuscripts, artworks and historical material.
Aromas of the past
To recover the lost smells of history, ODEUROPA developed sensory mining technologies, using state-of-the-art AI techniques and semantic technology to analyse European digital heritage collections in seven languages and spanning four centuries.
By training computers to identify ‘smell events’ within these texts and images, they mapped vocabularies, spaces, events, practices and emotions associated with smells and smelling. This resulted in the collection of over 2.5 million smell references or ‘nose witness accounts’, that form the basis of the project’s Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, and the ODEUROPA Smell Explorer.
“I was amazed the sensory mining techniques worked so well,” says project coordinator Inger Leemans, from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). “I think our intensive interdisciplinary collaboration made it so successful. Switching between machine and expert knowledge led to very fundamental conversations about ‘what it is to smell’.”
The project then collaborated with independent experts and perfumers from International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) to recreate these historical smells. The team used chemical analysis, historical research, surveys and fieldwork to recover scents from the past.
Examples include 17th century Amsterdam – a pungent mix of rotting oakmoss, manure, horse sweat and linden blossom – and a recreation of the Battle of Waterloo: gunpowder, horse sweat and the faint petitgrain and neroli of Napoleon’s cologne.
These recreated scents are now part of the ODEUROPA Historical Scent Collection, which provides a sensory bridge to bygone eras.
Enhancing heritage experience
ODEUROPA was more than just a mission to resurrect aromas from history. The project used meticulous research to develop methodologies that can help galleries, libraries, archives and museums incorporate olfactory storytelling into their collections. The project also discovered that working with smell significantly enhances the impact of these heritage institutions:
“Olfactory storytelling can attract more visitors and enhance visitor participation and connection. It’s not just the ‘wow’ of smell in a museum, or about creating more immersive experiences. People actually learn more about the artworks and sites in a multisensory environment,” adds Leemans.
The project’s tools and resources, such as the Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit, provide museums with a framework for evoking history through scent. Heritage institutes now have the means to explore and present to visitors this often overlooked aspect of our past.
Worldwide recognition
ODEUROPA’s success has been acknowledged globally, and the project was ranked 53 on global communications agency Wunderman Thompson’s list ‘The Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2023’. Although smell might seem a niche topic, announcement of the project’s funding sparked significant global media interest, highlighting the widespread interest in olfactory heritage, notes Leemans: “We gave hundreds of interviews to international newspapers, TV and radio shows and online outlets related to the historical scent construction. This was a huge advantage for such an interdisciplinary and complex project.”
Reflecting this interdisciplinary aspect, many of the team had never specifically worked on smell. ODEUROPA’s computer science teams had extensive expertise in image recognition, in text mining and in semantic web techniques for cultural heritage data.
The legacy of smell
ODEUROPA is helping to transform our engagement with cultural history by highlighting the power of scent. Their groundbreaking work introduces a multisensory approach to heritage preservation and presentation, creating deeper connections with Europe’s rich cultural tapestry.
Through resources such as the ODEUROPA Smell Explorer, Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, and Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit, the project ensures historical scents will enrich our understanding of the past for years to come.
“We are truly committed to making people more ‘smell wise’,” concludes Leemans. “And preserving and reconstructing scents from the past will help to secure historical cultural heritage for the future.”