evoke

To evoke is to call up a memory or feeling, as an old song does. Evoke memories, evoke sympathy, evoke a mood.

Smell evokes memory more directly than any other sense, because the nerves run straight to the areas handling emotion and memory. In writing, evoking a place is showing it rather than describing it. Note invoke, a different word meaning to call on; and that the Latin means to call out.