aromatic rings

This article is about a chemical property of molecules. For meanings related to odor, see aroma compound. Aromaticity is a chemical property in which a conjugated ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibit a stabilization stronger than would be expected by the stabilization of conjugation alone. It can also be considered a manifestation of cyclic delocalization and of resonance.This is usually considered to be because electrons are free to cycle around circular arrangements of atoms, which are alternately single- and double-bonded to one another. These bonds may be seen as a hybrid of a single bond and a double bond, each bond in the ring identical to every other. This commonly-seen model of aromatic rings, namely the idea that benzene was formed from a six-membered carbon ring with alternating single and double bonds (cyclohexatriene), was developed by Kekulé (see "History" section below). The model for benzene consists of two resonance forms, which corresponds to the double and single bonds' switching positions. Benzene is a more stable molecule than would be expected without accounting for charge delocalization.
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hydrocarbons (also called arenes) with molecular structure incorporating one or more sets of six carbon atoms in ring formation(s); called "aromatic" hydrocarbons before the molecular structure was understood because of their shared characteristic of intense smell.