Riviera Towns

Before the French Riviera became a playground for the jet set, there was Grasse - the perfume capital of the world, where acres of jasmine, rose, and lavender transformed the hills into an olfactory paradise. Herbert Adams Gibbons and his companion, simply called "the Artist," embark on journeys through these Mediterranean towns in the early twentieth century, capturing a world on the cusp of change. The narrative unfolds from the narrator's study in Théoule, where he first observes Grasse sprawling below the hills - a town he has somehow never visited despite its proximity. When the Artist arrives fresh from New York, the two set out on spontaneous adventures that reveal Grasse's famous perfume factories alongside its vibrant local customs and the overwhelming flora that fuels the industry. This is Mediterranean France before mass tourism, preserved in prose that treats the ordinary as extraordinary - a portrait of a place and era that would vanish within decades.