A bronze of a street perfumer

 Grasse is reputedly the perfume capital of the world. Three main perfumers, Fragonard, Molinard and Gulinard plus a plethora of smaller perfumeries invent new fragrances for most of the major perfume brands using natural ingredients, especially flowers, that grow in the area such as Jasmine and Lavender, but also synthetic fragrances for the food and toiletries industries. When launching a new scent, cosmetics companies will often send their sales people to Grasse to train in the art if the Nose, rather like wine tasting.

Naturally, everything to do with perfume dominates the town of 50,000 people of which about 3500 are directly employed by the perfumeries and 10,000 indirectly. Interestingly, the first major house, Galimard, was only established in 1747, which makes it the third oldest in the world after the House of Farina in Germany and Floris of London. Before this, in Medieval times, leather tanning was the major industry.

Perched on a side of a hill, Grasse is something of a sprawl. The old centre is dominated by charming tall ochre coloured buildings and narrow streets, while outside anonymous apartment blocks sit in rows on the hillsides. We are often forced to drive through Grasse on our way East towards Cannes and Nice and decided to stop for a visit for a few hours one quiet afternoon. Usually, the best parts of these towns are the well-preserved old towns and Grasse is no different. However, unike most of the historic towns that we visited, we noticed far more people, especially males of North African descent, just hanging around. Frankly, it was not a very comfortable feeling, being observed by people, who had little to occupy their time. This is certainly a town in need of a jobs program.