Opening of the new Chocolate Museum in Barcelona
For all you chocoholics, revel in a visit to Barcelona’s Chocolate Museum, “Museu de la Xocolata”. There are plenty of educational activities within the museum. Some of these include, a guided tour through the museum, a lesson in painting with chocolate, or simply a taste of chocolate delights from around the world.
The Chocolate Museum is a dynamic facility promoted by the Barcelona Provincial Confectionery Guild and located in the former Sant Agustí monastery. It provides a journey through the origins of chocolate, its arrival in Europe and its spread as an element between myth and reality, its medicinal properties and nutritional value, relating tradition with the future and forming part of our collective imagination.
The Chocolate Museum is located in a historic building that already had a relationship with chocolate: in the 18th century the Bourbon army was a fanatical consumer of chocolate and, according to the ordinances, chocolate was present on the menus of the 18th-century military academies: “For breakfast each cadet and company officer shall be given one and a half ounces of chocolate with a quarter of a pound of bread...”. When the troops were in barracks, acting as garrison, chocolate was also commonly eaten. The halberdier corps, the monarch’s personal bodyguard, was enviously known as the “chocolateros”, because, as they were a pampered, elite corps, they consumed a great deal of chocolate.