Lilac, amber and a touch of vanilla: a perfume lover’s guide to Florence

France gets all the scented glory today, but Florence was the birthplace of modern fragrance. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the boundaries among perfume, pharmaceuticals and prayer were more fluid than they are today, and Tuscan monks were specialists in extracting scents from the flowers and herbs in their cloister gardens. When Catherine de Medici left home in the 1500s to marry the future king of France, the friars of Santa Maria Novella designed a scent for her that could insulate her from the olfactory barbarism she was sure to encounter.

“Of course she needed a perfume,” Montano said. “Paris didn’t even have toilets then!”

Several centuries later, multinational conglomerates have bought workshops of the master artisans who took over the scent business from those medieval monks. But as I discovered on an autumn trip with my mother, there is still enough of an aromatic tradition to make following one’s nose a rewarding way to visit the Tuscan capital.

Base, heart and top notes

After the state confiscated the Santa Maria Novella monastery in the 1800s, it passed to private hands, and in 2021, an Italian investment company acquired the business. The original perfumery, now an ornate, multi-roomed shop, is on many visitors’ itineraries.

To learn about fragrance, though, the Villoresi Museum of Perfume, created by master perfumer Lorenzo Villoresi and housed in the Oltrarno palazzo that contains his workshop, made a better introduction.

We assembled for a tour (18 euros, or about $20) in an elegant salon whose windows overlooked a courtyard filled with exotic plants. Our ebullient guide explained that we would be learning not about finished perfumes, but their components.

Seated before one of his “organs” — the cabinet that functions as a perfumer’s laboratory — Villoresi told me about his trajectory from a student of ancient philology who experimented with oils to a “nose” who designs fragrances for the likes of Billy Joel and Madonna. “The ideas come from myths, from travels, from fairy tales you heard as a child,” he said. “Then you try to create a bit of the same atmosphere — not so much the reason behind it, but the feeling, the vision.”

Less ephemeral, he said, was what had happened to his profession. Not only had the number of master perfumers in Florence shrunk, but the entire craft economy around fragrance — glass-blowers who made bottles, leather workers who constructed boxes — had also been decimated. “The ones who remain, they’re not just craftsmen,” Villoresi said. “They’re treasures.”

A long history

I set out to find what remained of that treasure. After the “farmacia monastica” at the medieval San Miniato church turned out to be a gift shop, I settled on the next best thing, historically speaking. Farmacia SS Annunziata 1561 was founded by a spice merchant in the 16th century, and today sells house-made perfumes and cosmetics, some inspired by Florence’s artisanal past. (“The Woolmakers,” said the owner, Elena Azzerlini, “is like the hug of a cosy scarf.”)

There are newer members of Florence’s community of fragrance artisans. At Aquaflor, in a gorgeous Renaissance palazzo, Flavia Leone, a manager, explained that the family-owned company, founded in 2009, crafted its perfumes in the basement laboratory. One of the more exclusive, 1919, had notes of cardamom and tobacco that reminded me of another Florentine contribution to civilization: the Negroni. The shop’s home scents included one inspired by Florence’s famed Boboli Gardens.

“There’s the earthy notes and also jasmine and rose,” Leone said. “And lemon and orange, because the garden is full of lemon trees and orange trees.”

Not all of the city’s scents are so pleasing, as I was reminded when we visited master perfumer Luca Fisichella in his jewel-box Magno Gaudio workshop near the Pitti Palace. When I asked him to name the aromas that represented Florence, he didn’t hesitate. “As a Florentine, I can say this,” he laughed. “Steak and urine.”

An October fragrance

Having now compiled my own catalogue of scents, I had one last stop. Several perfumeries offer workshops in settings that range from the simple (San Simone; group sessions, 70 euros) to the opulent (Aquaflor, group and private sessions, 340 to 570 euros). I chose Profumoir (private session, 320 euros), co-founded by master perfumer Sileno Cheloni, where the Baroque setting whispered of dark passions.

The charming Lucrezia greeted me and sat me at a handsome organ. I told her I wanted my perfume to reflect my time in Florence.

Lucrezia began placing in front of me bottles marked only with a number. “This way, you aren’t prejudiced,” she explained.

I worked my way through the dozens of flasks, sorting them into groups: like, don’t like, not sure. I had to step outside occasionally to clear my nose.

After a few rounds, I had narrowed it down to five. Lucrezia revealed what they were: neroli, lilac, an accord of tobacco and vanilla, and two kinds of amber.

Lucrezia mixed the essence with distilled alcohol, told me the concoction should sit for three weeks, and wrote down my formula in case I wanted a refill. Then, she brought over a leather case filled with hand-carved Carrara marble stoppers. I chose one the colour of oxblood, and Lucrezia tapped it firmly into my bottle.

One more thing, she said, bringing over a label. “You need to give it a name.”

After the sensory overload of dozens of scents, my brain was frazzled. I reached for a few words in my paltry Italian. “Firenze in Ottobre?” I ventured. The two women conferred at length before delivering their verdict. “Va bene,” Lucrezia said, and handed me a fountain pen.

My perfume didn’t smell like anything the professionals had told me they would choose to represent the city. There was none of the iris that is the symbol of Florence, none of the jasmine that scents its gardens in spring, none of the leather for which its artisans are famous, and there was certainly no steak or urine. But as I took a final, swooning sniff before Lucrezia packed my bottle in its handmade velvet box, I realized it didn’t matter. Firenze in Ottobre would always remind me of this, the trip my mom and I made to Florence in October.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.