Odeuropa Smell Explorer

The main goal of the Odeuropa project is to raise awareness about the role of olfactory heritage in Europe’s cultural heritage, addressing its underappreciation. The project leverages the digitization of 23,000 images (Historical images, Images from books), 62,000 historic texts (Historic books, Novels, Theatre scripts, Travel writing, Botanical textbooks, Court records, Sanitary reports, Sermons, Medical handbooks) in six languages (English, Italian, French, Dutch, German, Slovene). Through AI-driven research, the project created a ‘European Olfactory Knowledge Graph’ that curates and stores scent-related data, which is then used to generate storylines, online encyclopedias, interactive tools, and museology toolkits. These outputs aim to promote the recognition and preservation of olfactory heritage and to engage new audiences with the sensory history of Europe. The project uses machine learning and computer vision to identify smell-related objects, places, and gestures in images, alongside annotated historic texts from various genres. This enables the identification of scent references across European cultural heritage, linking smells to emotions, places, and practices throughout history. One project output is the Odeuropa Smell Explorer, an innovative web tool enabling users to discover how smells have shaped European history and culture, drawing on a vast dataset extracted from 23,000 images and 62,000 historic texts in six languages.