Warsaw has just given chocolate lovers a new reason to visit Poland: A brand-new chocolate museum is opening at the E.Wedel headquarters in the capital.
From Sept. 4 onwards, visitors can journey through the entire chocolate production process, from picking and roasting the cocoa beans to processing and packaging the finished product over 8,000 square meters – making it Poland's largest chocolate museum.
The façade of the new museum matches the theme visually and visitors are greeted by a building that resembles a large bar of chocolate.
The Fabryka Czekolady ("Chocolate Factory"), as the museum is officially called, also provides information about the history of the E.Wedel company, founded more than 170 years ago.
Using the motto "Mozna" ("You can"), curators expressly encourage visitors to try things out here. In the interactive exhibition areas, you can taste, smell and even lend a hand by designing your own chocolate bar.
Poland was also once a world capital of neon signs. Many of these neon signs glow on the dark old walls of the Soho Factory in Warsaw today.
The former industrial site attracts hundreds of visitors daily with a collection of fluorescent relics that also give tourists a sense of how neon advertising was used as a creative weapon in Poland's Cold War struggle with the West.
The Neon Museum also offers a fascinating snapshot of Polish history until the ubiquitous signs were torn down with the Iron Curtain.
The neon boom fell into decline after the 1970s. Damaged signs were thrown away, while others consumed too much electricity for their owners to keep them. In Poland, the medium was also eventually supplanted by advertising from the West after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
