Warsaw. New museum in Warsaw of chocolate in Warsaw

On Wednesday, September 4, the E.Wedel Chocolate Factory Museum opened its doors to visitors in Warsaw's Kamionek district. You can start your tour from the outside. A building designed in the shape of a chocolate bar towers over Lake Kamionkowskie, where you can relax on benches resembling cocoa sweetness. Guests are greeted from the doorstep by flowing chocolate, the scent of which spreads throughout the immediate area.

– Wedel is one of the oldest brands in Poland. This factory has been operating here continuously since the 1930s. The idea of ​​creating a museum here has been circulating for a long time and I am glad that it has finally been realized. When we ask if there should be a chocolate museum at Wedel, the answer is simple. Everyone says: yes. We are opening today – on International Chocolate Day – and I hope that we will operate as long as the Wedel brand exists – emphasized the director of the museum, Robert Zydel.

Already 10 minutes before the first visitors were admitted, a full group of 30 people had gathered. Among those queuing to enter, both young and old could be seen, and both Polish and English could be heard. All were intrigued by the new attraction. They wanted to see for themselves how chocolate is made, and have the opportunity to try it, because – as the museum curator Marta Marocka mentioned – “chocolate flows in our pipes”.

– I am very happy. It was a gift from my friend, and besides, we like sweets. It is also an opportunity for society, especially the younger generation, to see what beautiful things happened here despite different times, and we remember those times – emphasized two elderly women.

– We are passing through Warsaw – said two students from Gliwice. – We have also heard about other chocolate museums in the world and this one seems quite interesting, unusual attraction – it is not an ordinary museum – they added.

The museum is adapted to the needs of people with disabilities. The space of the facility includes cloakrooms, bathrooms, a parent's room, elevators, folding seats in the cinema hall and Braille boards. Every 15 minutes, doors open for everyone willing to visit, from behind which you can smell the smell of chocolate. The guided tour takes place with a guide and lasts about 90 minutes. At the exhibitions, we can not only admire the exhibits, experience history and try sweets, but also design our own packaging for ptasie mleczko, supervise the production of Wedel cake or halva, and later crown the visit on the viewing terrace, from which there is a view of the green Skaryszewski Park, Praga, and in the distance the center of Warsaw.

– It's a story that begins with cocoa beans and ends with the last stage of chocolate production, i.e. the packaging – Zydel emphasized.

The tour starts from the mass line, the heart of the factory. Then you go to the exhibition hall, where you can see how cocoa is grown, harvested and processed. This is where the first tasting begins. You can try nibs – fragmented, dried and roasted cocoa beans.

Then, you go to a 19th-century factory, where the process of processing cocoa beans is shown and explained. Visitors can start a virtual production process and then participate in all its stages by using exhibits in the form of machines. In the historical part, museum guests will learn about the creators of Wedel's power and see original historical artifacts, such as a factory plan found in its archive.

Next, you can see the exhibit of the conche – a machine that mixes cocoa ingredients. This room also hosts a second tasting – you can taste dark, milk and caramel chocolate. After the taste experiences, the guide invites you to a room consisting of a kingdom of shapes, or the land of chocolate bars. The shapes of the pralines that are in this room were approved by Jan Wedel himself, and during sensory play, you can smell different types.

On the tour path we will also encounter the land of ptasie mleczko, where you can relax for a while, sitting on poufs in the shape of chocolate-covered marshmallows and looking at the “marshmallow” clouds suspended from the ceiling. After the relaxation zone, the guide takes the group to the most chocolatey exhibit in the entire museum. It is an interactive model of Kamionek from the 1920s-1930s made of 300 kg of real chocolate. You can admire it, listen to it and smell it.

On the way to the last exhibition hall there is a cinema, where you can watch a film about people associated with the Wedel factory working in different places, in different positions. They talk about their work filled with passion, recall different moments, important both for them and for the factory. The last exhibition hall is full of artifacts related to the visual layer of Wedel products. Sweet packaging from different years is presented. You can also design your own carton of ptasie mleczko.

– The key to any museum is to make it with attention, care and love. I have no doubt that our museum was made with such care and attention. Its shape, the story that is told here, was influenced by the people who work here. And I think that is the best recommendation – emphasized the director of the museum.

On the staircase leading to the next exhibition halls, you can observe the production lines and the real process of working on the products. – In my opinion, what is unique is that the museum is in one building, where the production lines are, so when walking through the museum corridors, we come across windows from which we can watch what is happening in production. The smell that spreads through our museum is not the smell emitted by aerosols – it is the smell coming from the production lines. This is a huge advantage over other places of this type. We are authentic here. We are in a place where products well known from stores are made – explains director Zydel.

A regular admission ticket to the museum costs PLN 70, a reduced ticket PLN 55. Family and group tickets are also available.