There’s something guests often say when they first walk into Can Frare.
Sometimes they pause in the hallway. Sometimes they close their eyes. But almost always, they say it with a smile:
“What is that smell?”
It’s a beautiful question, because the answer says so much about this house, and about Ibiza.
The scent of Can Frare doesn’t come from one place. Like the finca itself, it’s layered and deliberate. Every room holds part of a larger story, of wood, flower, and air.
We can try to distill its secrets.
The first note is structural. Quite literally.
Our principal ceiling beams are made from centuries-old Sabina wood, sourced from the native Juniperus thurifera, a tree that grows well in ibiza.
Sabina wood has a deep, earthy scent, musky and almost sacred. In fact, its Latin name translates as “incense-producing juniper”. When burned, it gives off a sweet, smoky fragrance that has long been used in local rituals. When cut and cured, the beams gently perfume the rooms below, slowly releasing their scent, for a period of many years.
Visitors often remark on the comforting aroma, unaware it’s the house itself that smells so good.
We always keep Oriental lilies in the living room, a quiet ritual of ours.
Their fragrance is unmistakable: rich, heady, honeyed. One bloom is enough to fill the house with its sweet, powdery scent. Bold and sculptural, they’re as beautiful to look at as they are to breathe in.
And then, quietly in the background, comes the final note: our diffusers.
Each room at Can Frare carries a subtle fragrance from Aromas de Ibiza, a local firm we love for their quality, elegance, and deep connection to the island’s palette.
We rotate between a few favourite blends:
• Vanilla & sandalwood: soft and warm, like the air after sunset
• Orange & cinnamon: gently spiced, perfect in spring
• Lemon & fig: bright, green, and Mediterranean — a breath of orchard
Scent memory is real. These oils leave a trace in the mind, long after the suitcase is packed.
A Garden That Blooms by Night
Outside the house, too, fragrance lives in the land.
We sit below a large pine forest, so the scent of Lebanese pine is a constant. But in the terraces surrounding the finca, we’ve planted frangipani, jasmine, and lady of the night.
On warm evenings, they come alive, a soft floral perfume that drifts on the breeze and settles near the pool, the porch, the edge of a sunset supper.
It’s not just what you see here.
It’s what you smell.
And scent, more than any other sense, is the one that anchors us in memory.
“El olor de la leña me tocaba el corazón como unos dedos, como un jazmín, como algunos recuerdos.”
Pablo Neruda,
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