Brussels opens new chocolate museum

A new chocolate museum has opened in Brussels, celebrating the heavenly confection in all its forms. The Belgian Chocolate Village, in Koekelberg, is housed in the former Victoria chocolate factory, where 1,500 people once worked to produce bars, pralines and cocoa powder.

The museum tour route explains how chocolate is made – from cocoa bean to tablet - its uses, history, benefits, economics and variety. At the heart of the museum is a tropical greenhouse where cocoa trees and other plants grow.


Visitors can learn how the cocoa bean is harvested abroad, usually in west Africa where it was introduced by the Europeans, and then refined into chocolate in northern countries.
They are told the history of chocolate from its origin in central America where the Maya and Aztec Indians consumed cocoa in the form of a drink, to its arrival in Europe with the Spanish before it was mass produced in the industrial revolution.


Chocolate is one of Belgium’s main consumer products, with the small EU nation manufacturing around 172,000 tons of chocolate products a year, according to the Belgian tourist office.