10 Places That Smell Like Nowhere Else

All living things smell. From single-celled bacteria to tomato plants to great white sharks to people, we’re constantly detecting and reacting to chemical signals around us. Scents affect our perception of people and places, and they can evoke memories and emotions more immediately than any other sense. So it’s no surprise that the smells of certain places stick in our brains. (One British artist has even spent years mapping the smellscapes of different cities around the world.) Below are some places with especially striking smellscapes, from sulfuric mud springs to a room in New York City filled with 250 cubic yards of dirt.

Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, United States

This tiny Berkeley museum allows you to explore the olfactory history of the world. It’s devoted entirely to natural aromatics and artifacts, and visitors get a chance to touch, see, and, of course, smell the raw materials used to craft perfume essences. In the outdoor garden annex, you can sniff more than 40 essences made from fruits, flowers, grasses, trees, and animal secretions. There’s wormwood and cassia, musk and castor, and ambergris, a waxy secretion from a sperm whale’s intestines that is also a coveted perfume ingredient.

Paris Museum of Sewers, France

Freshly baked croissants, French perfumes, and cigarette smoke might be the first things that come to mind when you think about the smells of Paris. But underneath the city streets lies another world, one that Victor Hugo described as “fetid, wild, fierce.” That world is the Paris sewer system. The Musée des Egouts (Paris Museum of Sewers) offers a chance to see—and smell—a small section of the tunnels that flow beneath the streets of the French capital. If you choose to visit, you might want to do so during the cooler months. In the summer, the heat can make the smell especially pungent.

Wadi Dawkah Frankincense Trees, Oman

These gnarled desert trees produce the prized aromatic resin that is frankincense. Though they may not be the most majestic-looking plants on Earth, Boswellia sacra trees produce a dry, citrussy, resinous pine smell that you might recognize from the inside of a Catholic church. Wadi Dawkah was an important stop along the ancient Frankincense Trail, an incense trade route used by merchants for millennia. There are around 5,000 frankincense trees in the desert valley, including some ancient specimens.

Sulphur Springs, Saint Lucia

Located at what’s billed as “the only drive-in volcano in the world,” Sulphur Springs is a magical, muddy geothermal spring near the small Caribbean town of Soufriere. A visit to the Sulphur Springs begins with looking at whistling fumaroles and boiling pools from the safety of observation platforms. The water in the springs ranges from around 145–200 degrees Fahrenheit, but some openings called fumaroles can reach 340 degrees Fahrenheit. As the steam rises to the surface, it carries hydrogen sulfide along with it, which permeates the air with a pungent odor reminiscent of rotten eggs.

Rafflesia, Thailand

The magnificent Rafflesia, one of the largest flowers in the world, can grow up to 40 inches in diameter, sporting dramatic reddish petals that give off the distinctive smell of rotting meat. Known as the “stinking corpse lily,” Rafflesia are pollinated by carrion flies, rather than butterflies or bees. The rotting meat smell helps attract these pollinators into the flower’s giant red bowl lined with yellow-spotted petals. Plants from this genus can be found throughout Southeast Asia, but the largest species, Rafflesia arnoldii, is the official flower of Surat Thani province in Southern Thailand.

The New York Earth Room, United States

The Earth Room is a 22-inch-deep layer of dirt spread across a 3,600-square-foot gallery space in the middle of Soho. Created by American artist Walter De Maria in 1977, it has been a peaceful, quiet sanctuary from the bustle of the street below for three decades, where the mix of smells from the streets of New York are reduced to only one: the rich, damp smell of soil.

Disgusting Food Museum, Sweden

Though taste and smell are technically distinct senses, our experience of a food’s flavor depends on input from both taste buds and olfactory nerves. The Disgusting Food Museum invites guests to expand their palates and challenge their prejudices. Each item is presented with a short profile, explaining how it’s prepared and enjoyed in its place of origin. The global menu showcases just how subjective disgust can be. Root beer, a favorite beverage in Canada and the United States, is featured because many Europeans think it tastes like toothpaste. Meanwhile, surströmming, a fermented Baltic herring that’s a favorite sandwich topper in Sweden, made the cut for its aroma, which some compare to rotten eggs. There are plenty of opportunities for visitors to smell and taste select items and see what disgusts them.

Marobo Hot Springs, East Timor

In an isolated village on the border between the Ermera and Bobonaro provinces in East Timor, down a bumpy, turbulent dirt road, lay the remains of what must have once been an idyllic retreat. Today, the only surviving remnants of this resort are a stone building, terraced falls, and hot springs, all set in a lush green landscape with a view of the surrounding mountains. The springs produce nearly 530 gallons of water per minute and have the characteristic pungent stink of sulfur, along with large quantities of sodium and calcium.

Supersense, Austria

Housed in a neo-Gothic mansion, Supersense is a love letter to the senses. The little café offers coffee and pastries, but it’s home to a scent lab that was developed in collaboration with Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas, who began her smell archive of over 7,000 airtight-jars of scents in the 1990s. The shop sells a kit that Tolaas designed for enhancing memory with olfactory triggers. The kit contains “abstract smells”—synthetic scents that your brain has not yet associated any memories with. “Whenever you want to eternally record and memorize a moment,” the description reads, “you just break open the smell kit ampule, release the abstract smell molecules and take a deep breath.”

Köw Ata Underground Lake, Turkmenistan

This cavernous swimming spot located 200 feet underground in Turkmenistan doubles as a home to the largest known colony of bats in Central Asia. A long metal staircase leads down into the Bakharden Cave, where you’ll find a 235-foot-long lake. The warm waters contain high amounts of salts and minerals, most notably sulfur, which is responsible for the distinct smell within the cave. (Well, that and all the bat droppings.)