Researchers revive European historical scents, including the “smell of hell”

EU-funded researchers are combining multidisciplinary expertise with AI tools to document, reconstruct and preserve the historical odor of Europe.

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What do you think hell smells like? British researcher Dr. William Tullett faithfully reproduces its foul smell, or at least how our ancestors imagined it.

Thanks to an EU-funded research program called Odeuropa, Tullett does not need to spend years working on archives throughout Europe from 2021 to 2023. Instead, this information is accessible in Odeuropa Odora Explorer, a unique, easy-to-search historical odor database that includes over 2.4 million individual instances or references to different odors.

“Hell and its symbolism play an important role in European and Christian culture,” said Dr. Tullett, an expert at Olfactory History and Senior Lecturer at the University of York, UK.

To reconstruct this particular odor, he collected 16 related references^Th– and 17^Th– Central preaching. These range from expected sulfur and sulfur to more evocative descriptions such as “a million dead dogs.”

This scent of hell is just one of more than a dozen historical scents at the 2025 World Expo in the European Pavilion in Japan. There are also the smell of frankincense, myrrh and the Amsterdam canal, each with its own emotional, cultural and historical meanings.

All of this was reproduced by researchers from the Odeuropa team.

Professor Inger Leemans, a cultural historian at the Netherlands Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, said that coordination with the research team, said the World Expo is a vivid demonstration of the subjective and dependent smell in a historical context.

She said that while some Europeans found the smell of hell strangely appealing because the smoke reminded them of barbecue, Japanese tourists in Osaka found it “totally rebel.”

Save smell with the help of AI

Olfactory heritage (smells with cultural or community value) are still unpopular and difficult to record. Although research on aroma as a cultural phenomenon has grown for some time, the work has been scattered in various disciplines.

“The project was able to bring together scents about different fields,” Leemans said of the work done by researchers in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and the United Kingdom.

It goes far beyond the sulfur that rebuilds hell. The Odeuropa team has developed an olfactory heritage toolkit that contains a list of olfactory practices, odors and “scented places.”

The purpose is to help heritage researchers and policy makers recognize and protect a large number of odors and odors – characterized by odors or odors at a specific location, environment, or time.

In fact, smell can be a powerful tool to help people connect with history, Tullet said. The aromas available in museums and heritage make the exhibition more immersive and memorable.

“Smell allows people to interact with the past tangible, real and real,” he said.

Museums and heritage have attracted attention, and curators are increasingly turning to smelling as a way to attract visitors.

For example, the Odeuropa team conducted a scent-based tour at the Museum of Art, Archaeology and the Museum of Urban and Cultural History in Ulm, Germany.

They also made a self-guided tour of Amsterdam with scratches and thrill maps, as well as a olfactory storytelling toolkit, a guide to how to use odors on museums and heritage sites.

To unearth historical knowledge and “nose pair accounts” from approximately 43,000 images and 167,000 historical texts, the researchers trained AI models to find odor and aroma references in 16 texts and images^Th By the age of 20^Th century.

On this basis, they generate a knowledge graph – a structured interconnected information network that connects data and places it in context.

This cutting-edge AI use supports the EU’s broader ambitions to make cultural heritage more influential and accessible, including through European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-European-Europe

Inspired by Japan

Even before the World’s Fair, Odeuropa researchers had been exchanging ideas with their Japanese counterparts and were inspired by Japan’s pioneering efforts in scent preservation.

“Japan has always been an inspiring example of the smell of heritage,” Lehmans said.

In 2001, the Japanese Ministry of Environment created a list of 100 famous scents in the country – from sea fog that shrouded the Kushiro area in cool summer to white peaches in Kibi Hills and white peaches in Korean cuisine from the Tsuruhashi community in Osaka.

This inspired the Odeuropa team to think more broadly about how odors reflect identity, location, and memory.

“Smell landscapes are important spaces that should be protected and have a specific value,” Leemans said.

A groundbreaking Japanese olfactory artist Maki Ueda said that scent was once a larger part of Japanese culture, and his work inspired the European team.

She explained that during the Heian period more than a thousand years ago, Scent was used not only in perfume, but also as a form of social signals and information.

“We don’t have that deliciousness and sensitivity to smells these days.”

Ueda stressed that interacting with the olfactory art is a meaningful educational experience. “People realize they have forgotten the power of the smell.”

Attracting the feeling of being forgotten

Leemans agrees that the smell has been turned a blind eye but thinks it may be making a comeback now.

“Most people have a lot of nose knowledge that they don’t usually use,” she said. “They may have a hard time finding these words, but if we help them, they can actually bring that knowledge together.”

To keep the conversation going, Leemans left his AI Avatar in Osaka. Her digital version will continue to introduce Odeuropa’s research and answer visitors’ questions elsewhere in the world.

Her team has also been discussing potential future collaborations with Japanese partners, who do interesting work in collecting, documenting and presenting aromas.

“We can move forward together and learn from each other in many different ways,” she said.

The research in this article is funded by the EU’s Horizon Program. The views of respondents do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

This article was originally published in the European Journal of Research and Innovation.

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