Louvre

The Louvre, the vast royal palace and art museum on the right bank of the Seine, serves in Perfume as a fixed point in the geography of eighteenth-century Paris, a landmark that orients the city's stench-laden atmosphere and, more importantly, becomes a mirror for the emotional state of the aging perfumer Giuseppe Baldini.

Geography and Atmosphere

The Louvre stands at the heart of the city's olfactory landscape. The narrator's sweeping description of Parisian stench—the manure in the streets, the urine in the courtyards, the rotting cabbage and mutton fat in the kitchens, the greasy sheets and chamber-pots in the bedrooms—establishes the pervasive foulness that defines the capital. The Louvre, as the royal residence, is not exempt from this universal decay: "the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the King himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the Queen like an old goat, summer and winter." The palace is thus embedded in the same miasma that covers every corner of the city, a monument to the inescapable physical reality of the age.

Baldini's View from the Pont au Change

The Louvre appears most vividly in the narrative through the eyes of Giuseppe Baldini, the master perfumer whose shop and home are located on the Pont au Change. From his study window on the second floor, Baldini gazes out at the river and the Louvre beyond. The view becomes a symbol of his own decline and the passage of time. As he stands at the window, an old man, he sees the sun angled above the river and the barges sliding slowly to the west, towards the Pont-Neuf and the quay below the galleries of the Louvre. The river flows away from him, and he feels that his own life and wealth are flowing away with it. The Louvre, in this context, is a fixed, distant landmark that underscores his sense of loss and the inexorable movement of time.

A Moment of False Hope

Later, as the sun sets, Baldini experiences a brief, illusory moment of hope. He opens the jalousie and sees the deep red rim of the sun behind the Louvre, the softer fire across the slate roofs of the city. The river below him shines like gold, and for a moment it seems the direction of the river has changed, flowing toward him. The Louvre, silhouetted against the sunset, becomes part of this golden mirage, a vision that briefly convinces Baldini that his fortunes might be reversed. But the moment passes; night falls, and the view turns into a rigid, ashen-grey silhouette. The Louvre, once again, is merely a cold, unchanging monument in a world that has left him behind.