Fragonard Factory & Museum Reviews (Grasse, France)

Villa-Musee Jean-Honore Fragonard

Columbus, Ohio

April 15, 2005

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The charming and intimate Fragonard Museum showcases the life of this artist, who was born in Grasse in 1732. It is housed in a simple country house built outside of the city walls in the late 1600s. The collection features some of his most famous ...Read more

From journal Sweet-Smelling Grasse

Sweet Smelling and Fantastically Interesting

by TianjinPaul

Rotherham, United Kingdom

December 2, 2012

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Best of IgoUgo I pass through Grasse regularly on my way to play cricket in the mountain village of St Valier du Thiey. The only time I had ever stopped there were when I was waiting for a bus or waiting to meet friends who would give me a lift. I found that it ...Read more I pass through Grasse regularly on my way to play cricket in the mountain village of St Valier du Thiey. The only time I had ever stopped there were when I was waiting for a bus or waiting to meet friends who would give me a lift. I found that it had a rather nice market square, which was a nice place to stop for a coffee or a spot of antiquing and that there was a wonderful palm-lined avenue that ran from the modern city at the base of the hill on which Grasse is located to the old town higher up the mountain. This all seemed nice, but not for one minute had I considered Grasse as a primary tourist objective - it was always somewhere I stopped along the way.

However, when my mother came to visit me recently, I found myself in something of a pickle. She had visited the Cote d'Azur before and had, therefore, seen many of your standard sights. We had done all the museums in Nice, we had been to Monaco and we had enjoyed the coastline and the extravagance of St Jean Cap Ferrat. I was just a little bit worried about how I could keep her entertained for a week. So, I thought about Grasse. I was not hugely optimistic that it would yield more than a pleasant hour wandering in the Old Town, but I figured it would be a bit different from Nice. To my surprise, though, a little internet research revealed that there was more to the little mountain town than I had first realised.

A little research online revealed few places that could be interesting to visit. Top amongst these was the Fragonard Perfume Museum. Fragonard is a brand of perfume that was founded and is still produced in Grasse, but is now distributed around France and Europe. It's factory, which was originally built in the 1800s, is still in the centre of Grasse and remains open today. In the twentieth century not only does it produce some wonderful fragrances, but it is also open for tours and plays host to a small museum and rather large boutique.

The Fragonard experience begins on the top floor of the building, which has been fitted out as the museum. In truth, the museum is less than fantastic. It features very little of great interest. There are a few old pieces of machinery, the odd portrait and some examples of glass perfume bottles. It is only when you head downstairs that things get more interesting. The first thing to note here is the aroma. The actual production takes place on the bottom floor (there are three in total). As you walk down the stairs, the smells from the production floor begin to drift up. This, in itself, is worth the visit. However, the third floor is also quite interesting as you can see the contrast between history and present day. On the left side of the floor, there is the old production system, which looks wonderfully antiquated - there are copper vats and brass handles and spouts everywhere. Then, on the right, there is the modern production floor, which can be seen behind a large glass screen.

As you might expect, there is also an extremely large gift shop, which sells all manner of fragrances, potions and lotions. The majority of visitors seem to get almost lost in there. However, when you consider that the museum is free, the gift shop is not such an extravagance. And, many of the fragrances are really quite good and rather moderately priced. Close

From journal Grasse and St Paul with Mumsie

No Perfume, but Worth a Visit

by TianjinPaul

Rotherham, United Kingdom

December 2, 2012

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Best of IgoUgo I must admit that before visiting Grasse and going through the whole Fragonard experience, I was somewhat hazy on its history. I presumed that the name of the company – which is one of the most famous perfume producers in France - came from the ...Read more I must admit that before visiting Grasse and going through the whole Fragonard experience, I was somewhat hazy on its history. I presumed that the name of the company – which is one of the most famous perfume producers in France - came from the family who had created the company and begun to make perfumes in the 1800s. However, this was not actually the case. Whilst Fragonard was a family business, it was actually set up by a man named Eugene Fuchs before being inherited Jean Manuel Costa and later by his children. The name Fragonard had nothing to do with the people who created the parfumerie. It actually came from an eighteenth and nineteenth century painter: Jean Honore Fragonard.

I was similarly confused when I saw online that there was the 'Historic Parfumerie', which housed a museum about perfume, and the 'Fragonard Museum. It seemed to me that these should be one and the same thing. However, once I arrived and began to understand that the name Fragonard was not just to be associated with perfumes I began to understand a little more. The Historic Parfumerie dealt with every that was sweet smelling, whilst the Fragonard Museum was created by the Fragonard company – specifically by Costa – to showcase the works of painters from the Grasse area with Fragonard chief amongst them.

After visiting the Parfumerie, and purchasing more sweet-smelling products than could ever possibly use – we walked down a small adjoining street to the museum. I was expecting big things as the Fragonard promotional literature describes the collection of art it houses as "second only to the Louvre". It proved to be a very distant second as the museum was rather limited in scale and scope. Quite where they got the nerve to make such a claim is genuinely beyond me.

The museum has three rooms of art. These include two rooms that focus solely on three artists from Grasse: Fragonard, Marguerite Gerard and Jean Baptiste Mallet. These two rooms were very nice, but they were rather small and housed just 15 pictures by Fragonard and less by the other two. For the record, Fragonard's work seemed nice albeit rather indulgent in his love of cherubs and blushing ladies. I enjoyed the work of Mallet much more. There was a third room that included other works from local artists, of which many were nice but few genuinely outstanding. As we made our way downstairs both my mother and I concluded that the art on display was very pleasant, but (a) there was nothing outstanding, and (b) the display was a little too small. Truth be told, we actually enjoyed a display in the museum's basement much more than we did the museum itself. The basement houses several temporary exhibits over the year. When we visited, we were lucky enough to find an exhibition of photographs by a French photographer who had travelled through India. Several of these were truly stunning and left the work upstairs in shadow.

The Fragonard Museum is free to enter and is just 100m from the Historic Parfumerie. For these reasons alone it is worth a visit, but it is a long way from the Louvre.
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From journal Grasse and St Paul with Mumsie

Fragonard factory

by eliza0214

Upper Brookville, New York

July 11, 2004

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Fragonard, a parfumerie developed in 1926, has its factory in Grasse open to the public. It's open seven days a week--a miracle in France--and you can take tours to learn about the perfume-making process. I have to admit that my favorite part was ...Read more

From journal Perfumes and the Middle Ages in Provence

Beware the Hard Sell

by gasgirl

oak park , Illinois

March 12, 2008

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OK, mountain top site for one of three factories of perfumes, Fragonard offers frequent tours in many languages. Tour buses crowd the tiny parking lot. Well rehearsed quick tour of where the perfume is made. Scents can be overwhelming. I got a ...Read more

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Fragonard Factory & Museum

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Villa-Musee Jean-Honore Fragonard

Sweet Smelling and Fantastically Interesting

No Perfume, but Worth a Visit

Fragonard factory

Beware the Hard Sell

Fragonard Factory & Museum

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Villa-Musee Jean-Honore Fragonard

Sweet Smelling and Fantastically Interesting

No Perfume, but Worth a Visit

Fragonard factory

Beware the Hard Sell