The Cour des Senteurs in Versailles

On a sleepy tree-lined avenue a few hundred feet from the Château de Versailles, the newly-opened Cour des Senteurs (“courtyard of fragrances”) is breathing new life into a historic quartier. A fragrant new life, that is, quietly drawing attention to an unjustly overlooked corner of Versailles, while evoking the ancient, perfume-drenched inhabitants of the royal court, whose enthusiasm for all things scented helped launch the venerable French métier.

Inaugurated in May, the Cour des Senteurs unites four distinguished, Paris-based boutiques: Guerlain, Paris’s oldest perfumer; the Millau glove maker Maison Fabre; Diptyque, manufacturer of scented candles and fragrances for the home, and the luxury traiteur and patissière, Lenôtre. This estimable quartet, and a tiny jewel of a museum, are all set among an elegant series of courtyards and gardens possessing a single theme: the delight of perfume.

The Cour’s opening underscores Versailles’ longstanding love affair with perfume, not only at the time of Louis XIV – who encouraged the moniker “most fragrant king in the world” – but also the 1973 founding of the ISIPCA (Institut Supérieur International du Parfum de la Cosmétique et de l’Aromatique) by fourth-generation master perfumer Jean-Jacques Guerlain, and the 1990 opening of the Osmothèque, which is devoted to the history of perfume and holds the world’s largest scent archive.

The Cour also addresses an enduring conundrum faced by this charming and historic city, which languishes in the vast shadow of Paris’s second most visited monument (the Eiffel Tower is first), namely how to entice visitors off the well-trodden route between the station and the Château.

“The objective was to transform an attractive passage between the Château and the oldest neighbourhood of Versailles, the quartier Saint-Louis,” says deputy mayor François de Mazières. Serving as both a courtyard and passageway, the Cour leads directly to this superb historic centre, Versailles’s oldest neighbourhood.

A stroll through the elegant Cour begins with the Maison des Parfums, housed in an 18th-century building where a gurgling fountain diffuses the scent of orange blossom – Louis XIV’s favourite – and an illustrated timeline which enumerates the milestones in the history of perfume. This timeline elaborates on the secret history of Versailles.

Visitors find out how perfume was raised to an art form under the ‘Sun King’, who doused himself liberally with a different scent for each body part en lieu of bathing, which was considered downright dangerous at the time. It is explained how, under Louis XV, the Château came to be called “the perfumed court,” due to the King’s demand for a new perfume every day; why Marie Antoinette’s passion for florals ignited a rage for rose, lily, violet and especially jasmine (an important olfactory theme throughout the Cour), and how a gift of perfumed gloves so delighted the improvident queen that she launched yet another craze.

After a thoroughly pleasurable half hour at the Maison, visitors emerge both enlightened and inspired for the next phase of the journey: the treasure hunt. Shopping at the Cour is no common experience, as it not only exalts perfume but also celebrates France’s legacy as the world’s leading supplier of luxury goods, all in an appropriately historical context.

The shining head of Apollo – the emblem of Louis XIV– rising over the courtyard wall beckons visitors to the gleaming new Guerlain boutique, the perfumer’s first dedicated shop outside its famous Champs-Élysées flagship. Mixing contemporary and traditional, the boutique’s carved-wood walls were created by France’s most venerable craftspeople and its glass murals and chandeliers commissioned from leading contemporary French artists. Divided into three parts, the shop features an atelier for the classic perfumes and scented candles, an area for the company’s luxury makeup line, and a showcase for exclusive fragrances. The latter include La Cour des Senteurs, a new jasmine- and bergamot-based perfume created for and sold exclusively in this boutique, in a gorgeous bee-themed flacon, this being another of the Sun King’s favoured symbols.