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 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.
Since the age of discovery in the 15th century, chocolate has played a role in the economic and social fabric of Barcelona. Along these lines, Barcelona port acted as a starting point for the sale and distribution of the product all over Europe.
In addition, the first workshop that transformed drinking chocolate into a solid product is recognised to have existed in the city at the end of the 19th century.
The initiative of the Barcelona Provincial Confectionery Guild in promoting the Chocolate Museum forms part of its desire to innovate and modernise the sector based on tradition.
Chocolate workshop
