From 10 September to 18 October 2026, the old town of Genoa changes its scent. Scent of Genoa 2026 is the new edition of the project that, for the first time anywhere in the world, took a fragrance out of the bottle and into the streets of a city. This is no simple repeat: this year’s edition returns in a broader, more integrated form, woven through Genoa’s landmark places, and it coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the UNESCO listing of the Strade Nuove and the Palazzi dei Rolli — an anniversary that becomes a reason to widen the story.
Where Scent of Genoa began
In 2019 Euthalia Fragrances did something that had never been attempted on an urban scale: scenting public space with the same care you would give a room at home. For weeks the air in some of the old town’s narrow alleys — the caruggi — carried a distinct, recognisable smell of basil, citrus and Mediterranean herbs, and anyone walking through found themselves, without choosing to, inside a shared sensory experience.
The figures from that first edition explain why it became news at once: five hundred litres of fragrance, two hundred and twenty diffusers installed along roughly two kilometres of alleys, two hundred local businesses involved and thousands of visitors. Press coverage ran to more than seventy pieces across local and national outlets. In truth it was the most recent chapter of a far older story — the bond between cities and their smells, which we retrace in the history of perfume.
The city’s olfactory signature
At the heart of the project is a fragrance conceived as a genuine olfactory logo. Genova opens on top notes of basil, mint, eucalyptus, orange and bergamot; moves through a heart of rosemary, lavender, coriander, pine and clove; and settles on a base of thyme, marjoram, sage and jasmine.
It is a green, aromatic profile that looks to the Ligurian hinterland and its culture of herbs rather than to the postcard sea — an identity choice, not simply a pleasant accord. Building a signature like this takes months of work and dozens of trials in real conditions, a process we describe in detail in how an artisan fragrance is made. The same fragrance lives all year round in the Genova reed diffuser, which brings the project’s scent trail home.
The new route: five kilometres of old town
The most tangible difference in Scent of Genoa 2026 compared with its debut is the map. The edition takes the symbolic route of 2019 and extends it to around five kilometres, covering some 270,000 square metres of urban fabric. The path runs through via Garibaldi and via Cairoli — the core of the Rolli system, with Palazzo Tursi, Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo della Meridiana — then drops towards via Luccoli, via San Lorenzo and the Palazzo Ducale.
The real novelty is the opening eastwards: via XX Settembre, via San Vincenzo and via Colombo as far as piazza Colombo, with additions such as via Ravecca and piazza Sarzano. The itinerary holds monumental Genoa and everyday Genoa together along a single thread — one you follow, this time, with your nose. That scent should help define how we perceive a space comes as no surprise to anyone who works with interiors: it is the same principle as olfactory décor, applied to the scale of a whole city.
An experience open to everyone
Scent of Genoa 2026 is not an event to be launched and filed away, but a continuous presence spread over more than five weeks. The diffusers stay active along the whole route for the full duration, so the experience is open to anyone passing through — resident or visitor — with no tickets and no timetable. The shops along the way become part of the story again, as they did in the first edition, and the fragrance turns into a way of rereading streets you cross every day without noticing them.
A project about the city
Around this core, Scent of Genoa 2026 builds a coordinated communication effort across institutions, press and social channels, and opens a concrete conversation about liveability in the centre — as far as the idea of a pedestrian zone in the stretch with the highest concentration of historic palaces. This is city branding in the most direct sense: a city choosing to tell its story partly through the way it presents itself, and the way it smells. The overlap with the Rolli’s twentieth UNESCO anniversary is no accident: it sets architectural heritage and sensory heritage in dialogue, two different ways of recognising the same place.
The first in the world, still the only one
Seven years on, no other city has reproduced an urban scent project on this scale. That is why Scent of Genoa 2026 keeps the line it was born with — the first in the world, still the only one — while letting it grow: more streets, more palaces, more time. For five weeks the old town will once again have a smell that identifies it. Anyone who was there in 2019 knows what to expect; for everyone else, all it takes to understand is to step into an alley.