Perfume Masterclass in Florence — Blend Your Own Signature Scent

Few cities have a deeper claim to perfume than Florence. The art of European fragrance was effectively born here, in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella, where Dominican friars began studying the medicinal and aromatic properties of herbs after founding their convent in 1221. Over the centuries their apothecary refined essences, elixirs and scented waters, and in 1612 the Grand Duke of Tuscany formally recognised it as the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella — today widely described as the oldest pharmacy in the world still operating where it began. To book a perfume masterclass in Florence is to step into a craft that has been practised on these streets for eight centuries.

A Medici legacy

Florence didn’t just make perfume — it exported the idea of it. When Catherine de’ Medici left for France to marry the future Henry II, she brought her Florentine perfumer with her: Renato Bianco, who became known in Paris as René le Florentin. His celebrated Acqua della Regina helped conquer the French court and seed the perfume culture that France is famous for today. That lineage is still alive in the city’s contemporary studios. Lorenzo Villoresi opened his house in 1990 inside a fifteenth-century family palazzo overlooking the Arno, and Aquaflor keeps its laboratories in Borgo Santa Croce. A masterclass lets you taste that tradition from the inside rather than through a shop window.

What a Florence perfume masterclass actually involves

The featured experience — rated 4.7 out of 5 by more than 576 guests — is held in a historic apothecary near Via Ghibellina, its shelves lined with antique jars of botanicals and centuries-old distillation tools. A master perfumer introduces you to a kit of natural essences grouped into the families a perfumer works with: bright citrus at the top, floral notes at the heart, and warm woods at the base. You learn how a fragrance unfolds in three stages — the top notes you smell first, the heart that emerges as they fade, and the base notes that linger longest on the skin — and why balancing them is what turns a pleasant mix into a wearable scent.

From there it is genuinely hands-on. Working on blotters, you mix and adjust your own composition under the perfumer’s guidance until it captures exactly what you want. You then bottle a 30 ml flacon of the finished fragrance to take home, along with a certificate recording your creation. The class runs about 1.5 hours, is kept to a small group, and includes complimentary refreshments — so it suits couples, friends travelling together, and anyone marking a birthday or anniversary with a keepsake that no one else owns. Prices start from around $80 per person, with all the essences, the bottle and the certificate included.

How to choose the right workshop

Florence offers several scent experiences, and they are not the same thing. A make-your-own masterclass is the most hands-on: you compose and bottle a personal fragrance. A longer perfume-creating workshop gives you more time and a larger essence palette for a higher price. A guided visit to the historic Santa Maria Novella pharmacy is more of a museum-and-shopping experience — wonderful for history and for smelling finished products, but you don’t blend anything yourself. When you compare options, look at three things: whether you actually get to blend (not just watch), what size bottle you take home, and the group size — smaller classes mean more time at the perfumer’s bench and more attention on your scent. Our comparison table below lays these trade-offs out side by side.

Booking with confidence

We are an independent booking guide, not the studio: every class here is run by a third-party Florentine perfume operator and reserved through GetYourGuide, so you get instant confirmation, a mobile voucher, and free cancellation up to 24 hours before your slot. There is no aggregator markup — you pay the same price you would booking the operator’s allocation directly, with the convenience of secure checkout and reviews from real guests. Whether you want a romantic afternoon, a rainy-day activity with real substance, or simply the most Florentine souvenir imaginable — a bottle of a scent that exists nowhere else — a perfume masterclass is one of the city’s most memorable couple of hours.

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