Perfume: Grenouille's Paris, Cantal and Grasse

Grenouille begins at the bottom of Paris. Süskind has him born here on 17 July 1738, abandoned by a mother who is quickly executed. He is named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, "frog", and ends up apprenticed to a tanner. The cemetery was the city's oldest and largest, packed with mass graves beside the central market. It was closed in 1780 and the remains were moved to the Catacombs in 1786. Nothing of the charnel house is left: the site is now buildings, arcades and shops around the Place Joachim-du-Bellay.

Visitor guidance: The site is the pedestrian Place Joachim-du-Bellay beside Les Halles; nothing of the cemetery is visible.

Grenouille's talent finds a home with Giuseppe Baldini, a fading perfumer whose shop stands on the Pont au Change. In Baldini's laboratory the boy copies and improves a rival's perfume, and Baldini takes him on as apprentice. Baldini also tells him that other techniques exist, and that they can be learned only in the region of Grasse. Soon after Grenouille leaves, the bridge collapses and the house and shop fall into the Seine with Baldini inside. The bridge you see now was completed in 1860.

Visitor guidance: The modern bridge crosses the Seine in central Paris; no houses stand on it any more.

Heading for Grasse, Grenouille is disgusted by the smell of people and climbs away from them. He settles in a cave inside the Plomb du Cantal and lives on the mountain's sparse plants and animals. After seven years he realises he has no scent of his own. The Plomb is the highest summit of the Mounts of Cantal, a volcanic peak in the Massif Central, reached by cable car from Super Lioran or on foot from the Prat-de-Bouc pass.

Location precision: The novel names the mountain but not the cave; the pin marks the summit.

Visitor guidance: Take the cable car from Super Lioran, or hike from the Prat-de-Bouc pass.

Down from the mountain, Grenouille invents a story of seven years as a kidnapped prisoner in a cave. In Montpellier he makes himself a body odour from everyday materials, and for the first time people accept him as human. The Marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse becomes his patron. Seeing how easily a simple scent fools humanity, Grenouille's hatred turns to contempt, and he realises he could build scents that change how people see him.

Location precision: The novel names the city, not a particular street or building; the pin marks Montpellier.

Grasse is where the book turns deadly. Grenouille finds a young woman named Laure whose scent he wants to keep, and learns enfleurage while killing 24 other young women to practise. Caught and sentenced to death, he wears his finished perfume to the square, and the magistrate reverses the verdict. The real Grasse still calls itself the world's perfume capital. Its tanning trade once made the canal stink, and the Galimard house dates from 1747.

Location precision: The novel names the town but not its streets or the workshop; the pin marks the town centre.

Visitor guidance: The International Perfume Museum (opened 1989) and the Galimard perfume house, founded in 1747, are in town.

Tom Tykwer filmed the story, but not in Paris: 19th-century modernisation had changed the city too much. Principal photography ran from 12 July to 16 October 2005, mostly in Catalonia. Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, the old city centre, was dressed as the Parisian fish market where Grenouille is born and where the story ends. The real market where the novel begins is long gone.

Location precision: A filming district, not one set; the pin marks Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, which stood in for the Paris fish market.

Visitor guidance: The Gothic Quarter is open to walk; the film set itself is gone.