Eyes shut, I hung on to my friend’s arm. She lives in the city, and I had put myself at her mercy. “Breathe out,” she told me, “and don’t breathe in until I tell you to.” We were not far from the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence, on a back street lined with small hotels, modest restaurants, and shops. Before blocking out all vision, I had registered, through the glass, some kind of long corridor, but otherwise I had no idea what was behind the tall double doors. Once inside, I immediately felt cool air on my face and heard Vivaldi playing. “Now,” said my friend, “open your eyes and breathe in.”

All cities have distinctive smells—Gauloise cigarettes in Paris, mangoes and sewage in any Southeast Asian megalopolis—and Florence is no exception. Here, it’s the acrid, head-clearing jolt of espressos, exhaust fumes (even though daytime traffic within the walls is heavily restricted), and the imaginary brimstone smell of bottled-up rage when you get ripped off at a gelateria. (“Ten euro, for two? You’re joking.”)

Earlier, shuffling across the Ponte Vecchio among the crowd, past the women pasted against the jewellers’ shop windows picking out which gold bracelet to buy, I imagined what it must have been like in the 16th century. Back then, the tanneries and butcher stores lining the historic bridge discarded unwanted innards and blood into the Arno River, the effluvia puckering the nostrils of the cloak-clad bankers crossing the river on the way to their uffizi (“offices”) to the point that the Medicis eventually booted out the shopkeepers and replaced them with jewellers and goldsmiths. Even today in Florence, as in all ancient cities, as you walk along narrow side streets you get the occasional whiff of drains. At the other end of the spectrum are the glorious scents behind those tall doors at No. 16 Via della Scala.

Imagine the contents of a spice box tumbled onto a bed of flowers. There are sweetness and bitterness there, a powdery dryness, an overall scent (quite unlike modern fragrances) that evokes rustling silk, masked figures, and ambiguous shadows. I walked down the marble-floored corridor, inhaling, through a small vestibule furnished with pews, and into a spacious room where light from a high round window turned tall bottles into amber, citrine, and moonstone. Carved figures flanked magnificent cupboards, and frescoes decorated a vaulted ceiling. It was the most unusual perfume shop I had ever seen.

It was also the oldest. Officina Profumo–Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella—to give it the full name carved in stone over its entrance—has holy origins. (That salesroom was originally a chapel.) In the 1220s, it was a Dominican monastery whose monks, over the years, gained a name for the herbal remedies, creams, and balms they made for the infirmary, growing their aromatic ingredients in the adjacent garden. In the 17th century, the pharmacy opened to the public. But even though it has been in commercial hands since 1866, the noble height of its rooms, the gilded splendour, and the soft lighting still give it the ambiance and hollow acoustics of a cathedral.

Its original furnishings preserved, the pharmacy withstood the effects of time until a November night in 1966 when, swollen by rain, the Arno flooded the city, thundering along the streets and through its doors. A salesperson told me about the special fragrance, Angels of Florence, that raises funds to help restore the 18,000 books in the city’s Biblioteca Nazionale that still need work. (The “angels”, she added, are the numerous students who helped with the salvage work, and who, for obvious reasons, were dubbed “mud angels”.) More memories are in the room next door, once the pharmacy’s laboratory, where shelves of 17th-century blue-and-yellow apothecary jars and portraits fill walls covered in ornately patterned paper. Ragged and blotched at its lower edge, about 125 centimetres above floor level, the wallpaper is a visual reminder of how high the floodwaters reached.

Beyond more double doors is the erboristeria—originally the herbalist’s shop, with its crystal chandelier, enormous gilded carved angels holding candlesticks, and ceiling painted with fruits, roses, and mythical animals. The room looks onto cloisters, trees, and a lawn, now used by the local carabinieri as a parade ground. Elaborate carving, like intertwined ribbons, decorates the tops of glass-fronted cupboards filled with brass scales and weights, pestles and mortars, glass retorts, and early versions of remedies still sold here today. Pasticche (“tablets you take to relax”, I was told) were originally packaged in an oblong tin instead of today’s round version displayed beside the cash register, the only nod to modernity. Acqua di Santa Maria Novella, another aid to relaxation, originated in 1614. The Acqua di Rose, said to remedy red eyes, dates back even further. And then there are the elixirs and liqueurs, including one called Mediceo Liqueur, said to have been created for the Medici family. The predecessor of eau de cologne was born here.

The salesclerks all wear black and have the straight noses and wide foreheads of Renaissance madonnas. Perhaps those features are not a job requirement, but multilingualism appears to be. “That smells like vodka,” said a man with an English accent. (It was hay.) He then asked if the pharmacy carried what turned out to be melograno—pomegranate—but which I overheard as “melodrama”. This place has had its share. You can buy Seven Thieves Vinegar; the name commemorates robbers who used to protect themselves from plague (while looting corpses) by wiping themselves with the formula. It’s also said to be good for fainting fits.

“I feel like I’m in a museum or something.” Awed whispers were magnified as three jeans-clad American students tried to identify the fragrances they were spraying onto small strips of paper. Viola and rose are easy, as is iris, but garofani? “Carnation,” said one young woman, recognizing its clovelike smell.

The perfumes attract a large following and the pharmacy now sells its fragrances, potions, and creams in most major European cities under the Santa Maria Novella name, and in a few locations in the U.S. and Asia. Soaps, skin tonics, even sunscreen and shower foam—the product list has grown far beyond the monks’ original preparations.

I bought a small bag filled with potpourri. Brown and crumbly, a mixture of herbs, flowers, and berries that grow on Tuscan hillsides, it is aged in terra cotta jars. I left it in its tightly closed cellophane bag for the flight back to Canada, but it was still potent enough to scent all the clothes in my luggage. In my carryon were a product list and a small book on the pharmacy’s history. A month later, and more than 8,000 kilometres away, the scent they picked up just from being within the pharmacy’s walls still lingers. -

ACCESS: Officina Profumo–Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella is at 16 Via della Scala in Florence (39-055-216276; www.smnovella.it/english.html), steps from the Santa Maria Novella main train station, which is also the terminus for many bus routes. It is also within easy walking distance of major tourist draws such as the Uffizi Gallery, the Ponte Vecchio, and the Duomo. The pharmacy sells a small illustrated book that describes the building’s history.

The building features briefly and anonymously in the 2001 movie Hannibal and by name in the book Hannibal, in which author Thomas Harris calls it “one of the best-smelling places on earth”.

For more on the power of fragrance, check out the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which opens on December 27.