Choco-Story Bruges occupies a 15th-century brick saaihalle — a cloth warehouse whose vaulted ceilings once sheltered Flemish wool traders before Belgium's chocolate mastery began. The museum opened in 2004 within walking distance of the Markt, anchoring a collection that spans Mayan cacao rituals, colonial trade routes, and the 1912 invention of the praline shell by Jean Neuhaus in Brussels. Its ground floor holds pre-Columbian grinding stones, 19th-century moulding presses, and a working tempering table where liquid couverture is spread, scraped, and crystallised under controlled temperatures. Bruges became a gateway for cacao imports in the 1600s, when Spanish galleons unloaded Venezuelan beans at Antwerp and Zeebrugge, funneling them through Flemish guild networks. By 1840, local confectioners had mechanised cocoa-butter extraction, transforming bitter drinking chocolate into smooth, moldable bars. The city's limestone cellars provided stable humidity for ageing ganache, and its canal-borne trade links ensured year-round supply of Ghanaian and Ecuadorian single-origin beans. Today, Belgium produces 220,000 tonnes of finished chocolate annually, with 60% destined for export — a dominance rooted in the quality standards codified by the Comité du Chocolat in 1981. Choco-Story's demonstration kitchen operates six days a week, guiding visitors through the praline-making process: tempering dark Callebaut couverture to 31°C, piping hazelnut gianduja into polycarbonate moulds, and capping each shell with a cocoa-butter seal. The museum's permanent exhibition traces cacao's journey from Olmec fermentation pits in 1500 BCE to the conching machines patented by Rodolphe Lindt in 1879, which reduced particle size to 18 microns and gave Swiss chocolate its signature melt. Visitors leave with a 12-piece box of their own pralines and a grounding in the chemistry that separates artisan chocolate from industrial confectionery — the difference between hand-tempered crystals and machine-stabilised fat blooms.