Place aux Aires

Place aux Aires is a square near the top of Grasse, bisected by a brook where tanners wash their hides and afterwards spread them out to dry. The odour of the tanning trade was so pungent that many a guest at the inn overlooking the square lost his appetite for his meal. For Grenouille, however, the stench was a familiar one; it gave him a sense of security. In every city he always sought out the tanning district first, and emerging from that region of stench to explore the rest of the place, he no longer felt a stranger.

Location and Character

The square is defined by its central brook, which serves as a working water source for the tanners who process hides there. The surrounding inn and buildings overlook this industrial activity, making the square a place where the city's commercial life and its olfactory reality are inescapably present. The stench that drove other guests away was for Grenouille a reassuring constant, a link to his own past as a tanner's apprentice under Grimal in Paris.

Narrative Significance

Grenouille arrived at Place aux Aires around noon on his first day in Grasse, after a journey from Montpellier. He ate at the inn there, and the familiar tanning odour allowed him to orient himself in the new city. From this square, he began his exploration of Grasse, noting the soapworks, perfumeries, distilleries, and wholesalers that made the town the centre of the scent trade. The square thus serves as his point of entry and psychological grounding in the promised land of perfumers, a place where the stench of his former life meets the fragrant ambitions of his future.