It is often said that smell is not essential for civilized and urban life. Nevertheless, private environments as well as public spaces, bodies, objects and food are increasingly deodorized and/or scented. In fact, in everyday experiences, the sense of smell is a driving force of human behavior and has a pivotal role in orientating emotional reactions, expectations, choices, preferences, and judgments. Since the eighties of the 20th century, a new interest, both in human and in natural sciences, seems to have been flourishing in order to recognize its processes, functions and effects. Many studies have shown its relevance in identity formation, social life, bodily health and psychological well-being, and olfaction turns out to be deeply influential in the perceptual engagement with the environment and in the relationship with the otherness and the familiar. However, in philosophy, with exceptions, the sense of smell is still a marginal and accidental object of inquiry. It is mainly linked to subjectivity, recollection, idiosyncratic association, intuition and sagacity. From a phenomenological and aesthetic perspective, odors are temporary and transient phenomena; furthermore, they are difficult to grasp also by language and taxonomy, as difficult attempts throughout history to fix stable classification and terminology show. This issue of “Rivista d’Estetica” has two main aims. On the one hand, to shed light on potentialities, inconsistencies, cognitive features and aesthetic..