Imhoff-Schokoladenmuseum
Encyclopedia
Hans Imhoff
Hans Imhoff was a German industrialist and businessman. He is founder of the Imhoff-Schokoladenmuseum, which bears his name....
on 31 October 1993. It is situated in the Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
quarter of Altstadt-Süd
Innenstadt, Cologne
Innenstadt is the central city district of the City of Cologne in Germany.The district was established with the last communal land reform in 1975, and comprises Cologne's historic old town , the Gründerzeit era new town plus the right-Rhenish district of Deutz...
on the Rheinauhafen
Rheinauhafen
The Rheinauhafen is a urban regeneration project in Cologne, Germany, located along the River Rhine between the Südbrücke and Severinsbrücke , just south of the inner city's historic old town.The project is set around the actual Rheinauhafen, a formerly commercial harbour developed during the...
peninsula. The exhibits show the entire history of chocolate
Chocolate
Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...
, from its beginnings with the Olmec
Olmec
The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....
s, Maya
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
and Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
s to contemporary products and production methods.
With 5,000 guided tours and 600,000 visitors a year, the museum is in the Top Ten of German museums. The museum is entirely self-supporting, receiving no subsidy
Subsidy
A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire more labor A subsidy (also...
. It has its own marketing department and is used by the Schokoladenmuseum Gastronomie GmbH for events.
Operator
The museum is run by the Schokoladenmuseum Köln GmbH. Since March 2006, the SwissSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
chocolate manufacturer Lindt & Sprüngli
Lindt & Sprüngli
Lindt & Sprüngli AG, more commonly known as Lindt, is a luxury Swiss chocolate and confectionery company.- History :The origins of the company date back to 1845...
has been its partner in producing exhibits. Prior to that the partner was the Cologne chocolate producer Stollwerck
Stollwerck
Stollwerck GmbH is a German food company known for the production of chocolate. In 1998 it acquired Sarotti.In 2002 it was bought by the Barry Callebaut AG, who sold it in 2011 to the Baronie Groep in Veurne, Belgium.- History :...
, and the museum was formerly known as the Imhoff-Stollwerck-Museum.
Attractions
- A small tropicariumPalm HouseA palm house is a greenhouse that is specialised for the growing of palms and other tropical and subtropical plants. Palm houses require constant heat and were built as status symbols in Victorian Britain...
, open to visitors, consisting of a glass cube 10 metres square houses cacao trees of the species Theobroma cacao and Theobroma grandiflorum. - Miniature versions of machines used in the production of chocolate, so that visitors can observe the process of making the small chocolate bars which are given out at the entrance.
- A special attraction is the 3-metre-high chocolate fountain; an employee dips wafers into the liquid chocolate and distributes them to the visitors.
- At the entrance of the museum is a shop with a wide range of chocolate products and pralinePralinePraline is a family of confections made from nuts and sugar syrup.-Europe:As originally inspired in France at the Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte by the cook of the 17th-century sugar industrialist Marshal du Plessis-Praslin , early pralines were whole almonds individually coated in caramelized sugar,...
s. In 2006, the chocolate museum entered a partnership deal with Lindt & SprüngliLindt & SprüngliLindt & Sprüngli AG, more commonly known as Lindt, is a luxury Swiss chocolate and confectionery company.- History :The origins of the company date back to 1845...
, wherefore most of the products in the shop are Lindt & Sprüngli. This deal succeeded its previous one with the Cologne-based chocolate producer StollwerckStollwerckStollwerck GmbH is a German food company known for the production of chocolate. In 1998 it acquired Sarotti.In 2002 it was bought by the Barry Callebaut AG, who sold it in 2011 to the Baronie Groep in Veurne, Belgium.- History :...
.
Among the most valuable items in the museum's collection are 18th and 19th-century porcelain and silver bowls and vessels for drinking chocolate from pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
. The museum also has on display historical chocolate machines and moulds for forming chocolate in different shapes, and a collection of historical chocolate vending machine
Vending machine
A vending machine is a machine which dispenses items such as snacks, beverages, alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, consumer products and even gold and gems to customers automatically, after the customer inserts currency or credit into the machine....
s.
a walk though of lindt chocolate history from the verry fist chocolate bar to the most recent soft milk chocolate lindor ball all chocolate in the musium is made to be creamy and delicious.