Grasse, the perfume capital of the world

Grasse is the hill town above Cannes where French perfume grew up, and it repays a half day for three reasons: its flower fields (the May rose and the late-summer jasmine), the International Perfume Museum, and a workshop where you compose a fragrance of your own. Since 2018 the perfume skills of the Pays de Grasse have been listed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Time your visit to the flowers and Grasse becomes one of the most memorable mornings of a Riviera stay.

The town sits at about 300 metres, on a slope that looks south over the coast, with a medieval centre of steep lanes, small squares and fountains. It is not a seaside resort and does not try to be one. People come for the scent: the museum, the historic perfume factories that open their doors to visitors, the fields around the town and the two flower festivals that bring the streets to life in May and August.

This guide is written for guests staying on the coast. If you have not chosen your base yet, our luxury villas in Cannes are the closest to Grasse of all our Riviera residences, and the guide to things to do in Cannes covers the rest of your week by the sea.

Grasse was a tanning town first. Its tanners had worked leather since the Middle Ages, and in the 17th century they began to scent it, gloves above all, with floral oils. Demand for those oils turned the hillsides into flower fields, and the craft of extracting and blending scent took over from the leather that started it. That chain, from the field to the raw material to the finished composition, is exactly what UNESCO recognised in 2018.

Three flowers carry the name of Grasse perfume in France: the rose de mai (rose centifolia), jasmine grandiflorum and tuberose. The town itself presents them as its precious raw materials. You will meet all three on a visit, on the blotters of a workshop, in the museum displays and, if your dates are right, in the fields themselves.

• Rose centifolia: the May rose, picked by hand in the morning during May.
• Jasmine: harvested from August to October, the flower of the summer festival.
• Tuberose: the third emblematic flower, rich and heady, a staple of the workshop organ.
• Mimosa: not a perfume flower in the same sense, but it lights up the hills from January to March, and the Route du Mimosa ends in Grasse.

Start at the International Perfume Museum, which tells the story of fragrance across more than four millennia, from ancient rituals to modern bottles, and explains the extraction methods you will hear about later in a workshop. Allow around ninety minutes. Its gardens, a living conservatory of perfume plants, lie outside the town in Mouans-Sartoux, so plan them as a separate stop by car.

Then climb into the old town. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Puy dates from the mid-13th century, after the bishopric moved from Antibes in 1244. Inside are three works attributed to Peter Paul Rubens and his school, and The Washing of the Feet, painted in 1754 by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, the town’s most famous son. The Villa-Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard, a late 17th-century country house, completes the picture of the painter.

• International Perfume Museum: the essential first stop, with guided tours at set times in some seasons.
• Gardens of the Perfume Museum (Mouans-Sartoux): fields and beds of the plants used in perfume, best in May and late summer.
• Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Provence: everyday Provençal life and decorative arts.
• Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Puy: Rubens and Fragonard under one roof, open to visitors from Monday to Saturday.
• The historic perfume factories: several open for free guided tours without booking, a good way to see stills and the production rooms.

Grasse fits neatly into a morning. Leave the villa after breakfast, walk the old town and the museum while it is still cool, spend an hour or so in a workshop, and be back by the pool in the afternoon. In May or during the jasmine season, add a field visit first thing, since the picking happens in the morning. If you want a full day inland, combine Grasse with the old village of Mougins, which lies between the town and Cannes.

Most of our guests go by car with a driver, which avoids the parking question in the narrow centre and lets you stop at the museum gardens in Mouans-Sartoux on the way back. A chauffeur can be added to any Cannes villa on request. At Villa Zeliane, Cap d’Antibes, a car with driver is included for five hours a day, which covers a Grasse morning comfortably.