@Benjamin Chelly

Built in the orientalist style and inspired by Egyptian and Indian architecture, its facade was decorated in particular with elephant heads. The theater, later renamed Grand-Théâtre, hosted large magical ballets and other major theatrical performances in vogue at the time. Following a haphazard management, the theater was forced to close, partially destroyed and its backdrop transformed into a bicycle ride.

For ten francs, in the XNUMXth century, Parisians frequented the bicycle rides in order to familiarize themselves with this new, completely modern transport. They learned in specially built rooms the art of pedaling. Thus, the Eden Theater site became the velodrome of the Opera district.

@Benjamin Chelly

In 1896, a Haussmannian real estate complex was built, and the famous English furniture merchant Maple & Co settled there. He made it his showroom and inaugurated a new way of presenting sofas and other furniture. He takes advantage of this immense space to recreate complete lounges and dining rooms, the visitor thus wandered between styles and eras: British, Victorian, colonial, Asian, neoclassical ... After 118 years of existence, the Maple boutique, which spanned the whole of the 2014th century and was for many an institution, ceased its commercial activity in April XNUMX and passed, not without a certain emotion, the keys of its establishment to Maison Fragonard.

A family house with ancestral know-how, the Fragonard Perfumery was founded in 1926 in the city of Grasse. Its name is given in homage to Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), famous painter of the king and son of the glove maker perfumer François Gragon.

She is one of the last representatives of artisanal and family factories in the Grasse region. In the 1950s, Jean-François Costa (father of the current directors) began an impressive collection of old objects linked to the world of perfume and brought a new cultural and museum dimension to Fragonard perfumery. This collection, now made up of more than 1200 objects, retracing 3000 years of perfume history, allows it to open three perfume museums, one in Grasse and two in two historic places in Paris: the Hôtel Particulier de rue Scribe (opened in 1982) and the Théâtre des Capucines (opened in 1993). Today, the three daughters of Jean-François Costa, Anne, Agnès and Françoise run the perfumery and perpetuate the work of their father, collector and art lover.

New to Paris, the Perfume Museum offers a unique museum concept and exhibits in a didactic and original way all the stages that give life to this mythical object of luxury and object of our daily life: perfume.

@Benjamin Chelly

With its know-how and professional experience, the Fragonard perfumery thus presents all the manufacturing secrets, from its genesis to its finish: raw materials, picking, extraction, distillation, formulation, industrialization, bottling and of course the process of creation and the nose job.

From the old velodrome, the passageway has been preserved, there are "hanging" old stills and maceration vats dating from the end of the XNUMXth century. In the center of the room sits a gigantic mixer with fins for raw materials, coming from one of the oldest perfume factories in Grasse. Between the Eiffel beams, the riveted sheets and the copper stills, everything is done to immerse the visitor in the atmosphere of a factory from the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Black and white photographic plates in glass retrace the different stages of production (picking, enfleurage, distillation, laboratory) in a play of positive and negative. This report, a unique and exceptional testimony of a bygone era, was produced at the beginning of the XNUMXth century in the city of Grasse.

In a second part of the museum, an exceptional collection of old bottles traces the history of perfume from ancient Egypt to the 300th century, through nearly XNUMX works of art: kohl pots, aryballos, lecythos, vinaigrettes, burns -perfumes, potpourris, travel cases, salt bottles, precious bottles ...

With a unique collection in the world of art objects related to perfumery, the Maison Fragonard exhibits in this new museum pieces representative of exceptional know-how from Antiquity to the XNUMXth century, the majority of which is unprecedented.

A museum that deserves a detour, with a shop offering all the fragrant ranges of the Fragonard house: perfumes, eau de toilette, soaps, candles, diffusers, but also cosmetics, shower gels and gift boxes.

Perfume Museum, 3-5 square de l'Opéra Louis Jouvet, 75009 Paris.
Phone. : + 33 (0) 1.40.06.10.09. fragonard@fragonard.com
Open Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 00 p.m.
Free guided tour.

To know more: www.fragonard.com