Brief history of the town: Grasse appeared in the cartularies of the Middle Ages, in the early 11th century. 

At the beginning of the 12th century, Grasse became a free commune and an active commercial town. It has still kept to this day the urban structure of the time. The winding network of its narrow streets reflects the successive expansions around its original hilltop, the Puy, where the cathedral stands, representing the spiritual and temporal authority. Through its strategic position between sea and mountain, it has become, in addition to its dynamic commercial activity, the centre of a vast administrative and judicial district. When Nice and its county were integrated into the department of Savoie, Grasse became a major fortified town thanks to its hide and tanning trade which gave it an international reputation. The slow decline of the tanning trade was counterbalanced by the creation and rapid development of perfume making, a craft industry which, in the late 18th century, thanks to the abundance of floral crops favoured by its specific microclimate, became the basis of a powerful industry with an extraordinary development and influence even today. 

The Bastide du Parfumeur: The Bastide du Parfumeur, the conservatory of perfumed plants from the region of Grasse, is a botanical garden intended to highlight the agricultural and landscape heritage related to the local culture of scented plants.  Flavours of Grasse: Savoury and sweet delights...  Like its architecture, the gastronomy of Grasse has been influenced by the Provencal and Italian culture: the variations of cuisine are countless.  In western Provence, the fougasse bread is salty and plain or sometimes flavoured with olives, in Grasse it is called fougassette. Sweet and flavoured with orange flower water, this delicious specialty is an all year round snack. It is still distributed during the mass that celebrates the opening of the Festival of Jasmine. Of Italian inspiration, there is the lou fassoum, a cabbage stuffed with meat and whose leaves are blanched in boiling water in perforated metal balls made for this purpose. Cooked in its juice, the fassoum has a delicate flavour that awakens the taste buds. Servan grapes were stored for months in special jars in attics.Raspberry grapes, from which winemaking is now prohibited, still reveals (for those who are lucky enough to discover a surviving vine stock in a garden) a surprising and unique taste. A long Scented history: The new Musée International de la Parfumerie will soon showcase the rich history of Grasse, the Capital of Perfume.  From tanning...  From the 12th century, fabric making and the processing of leather were the main specialties of the town. Leather processing was favoured by the abundance in the region of Pistacia lentiscus and myrtle, which were used as tan and gave leather its characteristic green colour. From the mid-13th century, the guilds of drapers and tanners were subject to new regulations. The tanners who had gathered around the water points were then located on the Place aux Aires.  ... to perfume making. Deriving from the tanning trade of the 16th century, perfume making experienced a rapid development in the 17th century, but it is not until the 18th century that it underwent a fundamental change. In 1724, glove and perfume makers left the guild of tanners. Their statutes were officially registered in 1729. Around 1750, the method of cold enfleurage appeared, which allowed perfumers to extract fragrant compounds from the most delicate flowers: orange flower, jasmine, tuberose. The industry provided great prosperity to the region. In the 19th century, Grasse specialized in the production of raw materials for perfume making and applied to this activity the principles of the industrial revolution. New machines and new extraction techniques were invented, particularly solvent extraction for which the Grasse industrialist Léon Chiris acquired the first patents in 1894. The 1850s also heralded expansion into international markets and the development of aromatic crops in the Grasse region. With the industrial revolution, industrial organic synthesis provided perfumers with synthetic products, original reproduction of natural ingredients already used in perfume making. The Grasse perfume industry then experienced major development therefore contributing to the expansion of related trades: glassmaking, tinmaking, corkmaking, boilermaking, printing, transport... The Perfume; The activity of the world Capital of Perfume is mainly focused on international trade as the thirty perfume factories sell their creations throughout the world. From all over the world, raw materials are sent to Grasse for processing.  Grasse has indeed managed to transform its trade into a real art, combining luxury, refinement and quality of the created or processed products. You can discover this art when visiting a perfumery, creating your own fragrance in a workshop or strolling through the narrow streets of the historic centre.