Reviving Europe’s historical scents—including ‘the smell of hell’

Researchers merge multidisciplinary expertise with AI tools to document, rebuild and preserve the historical perfumes of Europe.

What do you think hell feels? The British researcher, Dr. William Tullett, has faithfully recreated his foul smell – or at least how our ancestors imagined him.

Thanks to a research initiative called smell, which took place from 2021 to 2023, Tullett did not need to spend years covering archives across Europe. Instead, the information was accessible in the Ododeuropa Soad Explorer, a unique and easily viewed database of historical odors, including more than 2.4 million individual bodies or mentions of different odors.

“Hell and its symbolism play a major role in European and Christian culture,” said Dr. Tullett, an expert in the history of smell and principal speaker at the University of York in the United Kingdom.

To rebuild this particular odor, he collected relevant references in sermons in the 16th and 17th century. They went from sulfur and sulfur expected to more evocative descriptions like “a million dead dogs”.

This infernal perfume was only one of a dozen historic perfumes presented at the European Pavilion of the 2025 World Exhibition in Japan. Ferming, Myrrh and the smell of Amsterdam canals – each with their own emotional, cultural and historical connotations.

All have been recreated by researchers from the Obrete team.

Professor Inger Leemans, cultural historian of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands who coordinated the research team, said that global exposure was a living demonstration of the way in which subjective and dependent odors are the historical context.

While some Europeans found the smell of hell strangely attractive because smoke reminded them of grilled meat, Japanese visitors to Osaka found it “completely revolting,” she said.

Preserve perfumes with the help of AI

Olfactory heritage – headlights that have a cultural or community value – remain under -explored and difficult to document. While research on smell as a cultural phenomenon has increased for some time, work was previously dispersed in various disciplines.

“This project was able to bring together expertise on the perfumes of different areas such as history, art history, chemistry and heritage sciences,” said Leemans about the work carried out by researchers based in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom

And that went far beyond recreating the sulfur of hell. The Ooduropa team has developed a toolbox with olfactory heritage containing a list of olfactory practices, odors and “scented places”.

The objective is to help heritage researchers and political decision -makers to recognize and protect significant fragrances and landscapes – scores or odors that characterize a place, environment or special moment.

On a practical note, said Tullett, smell can be a powerful tool to help people connect with history. Museums and heritage sites can use the perfume to make exhibitions more immersive and memorable.

“The smell allows people to have a tangible, authentic and real commitment with the past,” he said.

Museums and heritage sites are already aware of it, and the Conservatives are turning more and more to feel like a way to start visitors.

For example, the Obreteopa team has helped create a perfume -based tour at the ULM museum, a museum of art, archeology and urban and cultural history in Ulm, Germany.

They also produced an autoguidized visit from Amsterdam with cards to scratch and SNIFF, and an olfactory narrative toolbox-a practical guide to work with odors in museums and heritage sites.

To find historical knowledge and “counter-nose” accounts from some 43,000 images and 167,000 historical texts in six languages, researchers have formed AI models to find fragrant and perfume references in the texts and images of the 16th at the beginning of the 20th century.

Based on this, they produced knowledge graphics – a structured network of interconnected information that slows down data and puts it in context.

This state-of-the-art use of AI supports the wider ambition of the EU to make the cultural heritage more impactful and more accessible, including by Europea, the European platform for digital cultural content.

Inspired by Japan

Even before the global exhibition, odor researchers had exchanged ideas with counterparts in Japan and were inspired by Japan’s pioneering efforts in preserving perfumes.

“Japan has been an example inspiring to reflect on the smell in terms of heritage,” said Leemans.

In 2001, the Ministry of the Environment of Japan created a list of the country’s 100 notable landscapes – the fog of the sea which envelops the Kushiro region in fresh summer to the white peaches of the Kibi hills and the smell of Korean cuisine in the Tsuruhashi district of Osaka.

This has inspired the Obreteopa team to think more broadly about how odors can reflect identity, place and memory.

“Odors’ landscapes are important spaces that should be saved and have a specific value,” said Leemans.

The smell was a much larger part of Japanese culture, according to Maki Ueda, a pioneering Japanese olfactory artist whose work also inspired the European team.

During the Heian period, more than a thousand years ago, the perfume was not only used for perfume, but also as a form of social signaling and information, she explained.

“We don’t have that nowadays, this delicacy and this sensitivity to perfumes.”

Ueda stressed that getting involved with olfactory art is a significant and educational experience. “People realize that they have forgotten how powerful the smell can be.”

Engage the forgotten meaning

Leemans agreed that the smell was without reservation, but argues that it could now make a return.

“Most people have a lot of knowledge that they do not normally draw,” she said. “They may have a hard time finding the words, but if we help them, they can really bring this knowledge together.”

To maintain the conversation, Leemans left an Avatar of her in Osaka. The digital version of her will continue to present the search for Obrepopa and will answer visitors’ questions for the rest of the world exhibition.

His team also discussed future potential collaborations with Japanese partners, who do interesting work in the collection, documentation and presentation of perfumes.

“There are so many different ways of which we can go ahead and learn from each other,” she said.

This article was initially published in Horizon The Ue Research and Innovation Magazine.