How Do They Reconstruct The Smell Of A Particular Time And Place?

That’s not an idle question, what with the Rijksmuseum running a project called “In Search of Lost Scents” that offers the odors of places from Amsterdam’s 17th-century stock exchange to the Battle of Waterloo to the Dutch locker room after a 1988 soccer championship, plus an endeavor called Odeuropa that aims to archive aromas from throughout European history. Here’s a look at just what some of those odors would be and how specialists reconstitute them. – The New York Times