How a whiff of pastries, books, roses and even rot can bring Vienna to mind

Smells can unexpectedly summon vivid memories and so should perhaps be paid more attention when we travel. The Austrian National Library is a highlight of a tour of Vienna, and smells of polish and old leather.Alexander Lauber, creative director of Viennese niche perfume house WienerBlut, has been receiving inquiries from customers as to whether he has altered the recipes of his peculiarly Viennese fragrances.However, within the abstract world of niche perfume there are changes in the wind.

Much of the time we treat the nose as the also-ran of sense organs, and when we describe a holiday to friends, smell is in most cases the last thing we mention. In the future, what will best conjure up memories of sitting in the courtyard restaurant of Vienna’s newly opened and palatial Leo Grand hotel is probably not an iPhone image of swallows swooping through the square of very blue sky overhead, but more likely an earthy aroma of freshly sliced truffle like that rising from the asparagus and yellowfin tuna maki in front of me.

Many Viennese believe this subterranean stink to be a leftover from that period. But in fact, it is from the sodium silicate used as a hardener during construction of the station. For the real smell of death, one guide suggests I should try the Capuchin Crypt. This is more art gallery than crypt, and with coffin-thrones like these it is quite possible to imagine that the dead emperors are now ruling the underworld. But there is the smell of nothing more than cool, still air.

A palace of marble floors and pillars, carved and gilded galleries of shelves 77 metres long, its frescoed walls, with a trompe-l’oeil balcony – a visual illusion – reach up into a 35 metre-high dome, and house 200,000 books.

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