Europe takes its chocolate seriously — so seriously that entire cities build festivals, museums and walking tours around it. A route mapped out by Matador Network strings together the continent's standout chocolate experiences across France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain, and it works just as well as a single mega-trip or a pick-your-favourites shortlist.
Start in Paris at Choco Story, a chocolate museum covering cocoa's journey from Mayan ritual drink to Aztec currency to European obsession (Columbus tasted it in 1502; Cortés brought it to Spain in 1528). Admission is €11 for adults, it's open daily 10am to 6pm, and the chocolate sculptures of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame are worth the ticket alone. Fifteen minutes away near the Louvre, La Maison du Chocolat — run by award-winning chocolatier Nicolas Cloiseau — does handcrafted truffles, macarons and salted chocolate caramels you can eat while sightseeing.
Belgium is the next logical stop. In the pretty town of Durbuy, the new ChocoPalace Festival featured forty life-sized chocolate animals sculpted by twenty artisans, plus a 'chocobar' pouring chocolate Champagne. In Brussels, Neuhaus (founded 1857) invented the Belgian praline in 1912 — a filled chocolate shell originally dreamed up by a pharmacist to mask the taste of medicine. Its summer line stuffs pralines with pineapple and lemon. The Groovy Chocolate Tour is the efficient option: 2.5 hours, six shop stops, €39 with samples included, departing daily at 2pm except Mondays.
The train east brings you to Frankfurt's Bitter & Zart, where two founders make over 100 chocolate varieties plus marzipan and nougat, all a short walk from the Eiserner Steg bridge over the Main. Then Switzerland: Zürich's Teuscher, founded in 1932, is famous for its Champagne truffle — a dark chocolate best-seller invented in 1947, about $7 for two. The Sweet Zürich Tour (2.5 hours, 85 Swiss francs, book ahead) covers the city's confectioners, while the free Festichoc in nearby Versoix draws 30-plus international artisans, complete with a top-hatted chocolate octopus and tours of the 1826-founded Favarger factory, home of the Avelines praline.
Finish in Italy and Spain. Milan's Venchi, founded in Turin in 1878, builds its chocolate around Piedmont hazelnuts ground into gianduja, with excellent house-made gelato — and the shop sits steps from the Duomo. In Barcelona, Oriol Balaguer, whose eight-texture chocolate cake won best dessert in the world in 2001, sells it at his city shops. And if you time it for mid-October, Perugia's Eurochocolate takes over the city for nine days, free of charge, drawing a million visitors and once boasting the world's largest chocolate bar at 5,980 kilograms.
It's a route for anyone who'd rather plan a holiday around dessert than a dessert around a holiday. Families get museums and festivals with face painting; couples get Champagne truffles and riverside strolls; budget travellers get a surprising amount of free admission. Either commit to the whole sweep or pick a country and build a long weekend around it.
