Farina 1709

Farina 1709 is the trading name of Johann Maria Farina gegenüber dem Jülichs-Platz GmbH, a family-owned perfume maker in Cologne, Germany, and the house behind the original Eau de Cologne. The company traces its origins to 1709 and is often described as the oldest perfume factory in the world still in existence. Wikipedia states this outright; the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) is more cautious, writing that the company "is assumed to be" the oldest [11]. Its light, citrus-based scent gave its name to Eau de Cologne, a term that later came to describe a whole class of fragrances.

More than 300 years on, the business is still run by the Farina family, now in its eighth and ninth generations, and it continues to make its Original Eau de Cologne in Cologne to a recipe it keeps closely guarded [2]. The company's history is also a story of imitation: its success inspired thousands of copies, a long dispute with the Cologne rival later known as 4711, and decades of lobbying that fed into Germany's first trademark law.

The Farina family came from Santa Maria Maggiore, a town in Piedmont in northern Italy. Johann Maria Farina, born Giovanni Maria Farina in 1685, is the figure the company places at the centre of its story. In its own telling, he moved to Cologne in 1709, founded what it calls the oldest perfume factory in the world, and there created a new kind of scent by combining bergamot and other citrus oils with pure alcohol for the first time [2]. He named the fragrance Eau de Cologne in honour of his new home city.

Independent accounts describe a more layered beginning. Both Wikipedia and the DPMA credit the founding to his elder brother, Giovanni Battista Farina (Johann Baptist Farina in German), who set up the firm "G. B. Farina" in Cologne on 13 July 1709 [11]. In this version, Johann Maria was already living in Cologne, where he had worked for an uncle since 1708, and he joined his brother's business only in 1714. Wikipedia also dates the creation of the fragrance earlier than the company does, to 1703, years before Johann Maria entered the family firm [9]. The sources therefore agree on the year 1709 and on Cologne as the place, but they differ on which brother founded the business and on when the scent was first made.

According to Wikipedia, Johann Baptist registered as a new resident at Cologne town hall a few days after founding the firm and was soon granted the citizenship he needed to run a private business. On 1 August 1709 he signed a twelve-year lease on a building at the junction of two streets in the old town, now known as Unter Goldschmidt. The book-keeping he started in July 1709 has, Wikipedia notes, never been interrupted since, and the company archive still dates from that year.

The early firm was not a perfume house at all. It sold the kind of luxury goods expected from an Italian-run shop of the period: lace, handkerchiefs, silk stockings, wigs, feathers, tobacco boxes, sealing wax and face powder. Johann Baptist and his brother-in-law, Franz Balthasar Borgnis, traded first as "Farina & Compagnie". After Johann Maria and another brother, Carl Hieronymus Farina, joined in 1714 and 1716, the business became "Gebrüder Farina & Comp." (Farina Brothers and Co.). From 1716 onwards it went through a series of financial difficulties.

Johann Maria Farina's scent began as a side line. The DPMA describes it as a fragrance water of the type then called "Aqua mirabilis", or miracle water, at a time when perfumes were widely believed to have medicinal effects. What set it apart was its character. The heavy, very expensive perfumes worn by the nobility of the day were built on musk; Farina's was built instead on bergamot, lemon and orange. He is said to have compared it to an Italian spring morning after the rain.

The DPMA credits his success to a careful policy for buying raw materials, a well-organised production process and his own skill as a perfumer, and goes so far as to call him practically the inventor of the brand perfume. Only over time did Eau de Cologne move from a secondary product to the focus of the business.

Johann Baptist Farina died on 24 April 1732. Johann Maria then renamed the business after himself and, from 1733, ran it from a new address on Obenmarspforten, directly opposite the square known as Jülichs-Platz. The short form of that address, "Farina gegenüber" ("Farina opposite"), became a trademark in its own right. A French version of the name, "Jean Marie Farina vis-à-vis de la place Juliers", was also in common use for a long time. Johann Maria Farina died in 1766.

The scent spread quickly. According to the company, Eau de Cologne reached the European royal courts in the 1730s, with customers including Emperor Charles VI, the King of Prussia and Clemens August of Bavaria. The DPMA describes its popularity growing first in France and then across Europe, and says Eau de Cologne dominated the perfume market until at least the end of the 19th century. In that period, it writes, Farina was the most famous perfume manufacturer in the world and a supplier to many royal courts.

The French occupation of Cologne between 1794 and 1814 played a part in that spread. In the company's account, French soldiers and officers carried the scent across Europe, and Napoleon and the Bonaparte family became regular customers.

Success brought imitation. Farina 1709 says thousands of copies appeared in the 19th century: the name Eau de Cologne came into use worldwide, while the original composition stayed a family secret. The company describes all the imitations as based on different formulas. In the 1830s Jean Marie Farina, a later generation of the family, began organised efforts to protect the brand. After decades of his lobbying, Germany passed its first trademark protection act in 1874, which came into force on 1 May 1875, and Farina became the first Cologne company to register its labels as trademarks [11].

The 20th and 21st centuries brought quieter milestones. The red tulip logo, still the company's symbol, was introduced in 1924. In 2003 a fragrance museum opened in the historic Farina House in Cologne, telling the story of the company and of the term Eau de Cologne. In 2012 the company secured the word mark "FARINA 1709 Original Eau de Cologne", according to the DPMA. In 2024 Johann Maria Farina of the eighth generation became a bergamot ambassador, a link to the citrus fruit at the heart of the original recipe.

Farina 1709 has no corporate parent. The operating company, Johann Maria Farina gegenüber dem Jülichs-Platz GmbH, is owned and run by descendants of the founding family. Wikipedia describes them as the eighth generation of the family [9]. The company's own, more recent account adds the ninth: Johann Maria Farina leads the business together with his daughter, Christina Maria Louise Farina, whom the company describes as the first woman to take up the direct succession in the family line. No acquisitions or outside investors are documented.

Farina 1709 presents itself as a family business that still works the way its first generation did more than 300 years ago. The company says its guiding principles are clear, pure compositions and fine essences, along with care in processing and a deep knowledge of raw materials. Its tagline, "Das Original seit 1709" ("The original since 1709"), sums up the claim at the core of its identity: that it is the source of Eau de Cologne rather than one of its many followers.

The brand describes its style as Italian feeling with French refinement, rooted in Cologne from the start. It credits Johann Maria Farina with introducing bergamot to perfumery in the city, and says that bergamot is still sourced directly from farmers in Reggio Calabria in southern Italy. Its own history counts royal houses and well-known figures among its first ambassadors.

Historically, Farina has occupied the upper end of the market. The DPMA, comparing the two Cologne houses, places 4711 in the low-price range and Farina, as before, as a luxury article [11]. Its Cologne shop reflects the same emphasis on the past: a 2016 travel piece in InDaily noted that the store focuses on heritage, with old photographs and parts of the historical collection on display alongside the full range of scents for testing.

The core product is the Original Eau de Cologne, which the company says is still made in Cologne and describes as discreet, clear and timeless, for women and men. A variant called Original Eau de Cologne – Rosolie sits alongside it.

The most recent addition is the Série Extrait de Cologne, created by ninth-generation perfumer Louise Farina. The collection, presented as a "Première Edition", comprises six extraits. According to the company, they return to the essences Johann Maria Farina chose for the original Eau de Cologne and reinterpret them at a higher concentration: bergamot, mandarin, neroli, jasmine, musk and amber. Individual scents include Jasmin Méditerranée and Bergamotte Admirable, and a discovery set gathers the range.

Beyond Eau de Cologne, the house sells Cuir de Russie, offered as an eau de toilette, an aftershave and a miniature. A separate line under the name Tina Farina includes fragrances called Feeling, Spontan and Harmony. The range is completed by home items such as an Original Eau de Cologne scented candle, a fan, and a book titled "Eau de Cologne Farina 1709".

The company has also turned its history into an experience. Alongside the fragrance museum, it runs the Farina Atelier Eau de Cologne, which it describes as new: a workshop where guests create their own Eau de Cologne under guidance, at the site where, the company says, the scent originated in 1709.

Royal favour runs through Farina's history. According to Wikipedia, the company has held royal warrants as purveyor of perfume to the German, French, Italian, Swedish, Russian and British royal families [9]. A royal warrant from Queen Victoria is dated to 1837.

The customer list reads like a survey of European cultural history. The DPMA names Mozart, Schiller, Napoleon, Heine, Beethoven, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann and Bill Clinton among Farina's customers over the years [11]. The company archive holds orders from Queen Victoria (600 bottles), from Goethe ("6 glasses") and from Kaiser Wilhelm I ("the usual shipment"). The company adds Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Emperor Franz Joseph to the list.

The house has also drawn attention from outside the perfume trade. The DPMA featured it in its "Brands with history" series under the title "World's oldest perfume manufacturer". InDaily's 2016 travel article called Farina the world's oldest fragrance company and its Eau de Cologne "proudly authentic", noting that its scent was used by many European royals [10]. The same article recalled that the city of Cologne placed a statue of Johann Maria Farina on its town hall tower.

Farina's longest-running dispute was one it brought rather than faced. Its fame invited copying, and the most prominent case involved Wilhelm Mülhens, whose Eau de Cologne later became known as 4711 and has been made in Cologne since 1799. According to the DPMA, Mülhens traded as "Franz Maria Farina" from 1799 to borrow the Farina reputation, and was only forbidden to use "Farina" in his company name in 1873 [11].

InDaily gives a shorter version of the same story: the Farina family challenged Mülhens and he lost, but he got around the ruling by employing another man named Farina so that he could keep using the name [10]. Over time the rival became the better-known product. InDaily described 4711 as the much more famous imitator, and the DPMA titles part of its history "An imitation becomes more famous than the original".

Farina 1709 is active. As of October 2026, the company was promoting its new Série Extrait de Cologne, and its online shop serves customers across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia, in six languages including German, English, French and Chinese. The flagship boutique on Obenmarspforten in Cologne, which the company describes as its original shop and the place where the first Eau de Cologne was created, is open seven days a week and houses a small fragrance museum. Guided museum tours remained bookable through the company's museum website in October 2026.