Autism-friendly museum visit

Upon entering our central entrance hall, you will walk past the shop entrance to the reception area. The museum tour ends in our shop, so we recommend that you visit the shop after the museum tour. 

Upon arrival, you can leave your coats, backpacks and other items in our free lockers. Then report to our reception desk, where our staff will welcome you. 

Each visitor will receive an individual audio guide at the start. We offer audio guides in Dutch, French, English, German and Spanish. Our staff will explain how to use the audio guide, after which you will walk a few metres to the large start screen. There, you will activate the audio guide by scanning the audio tag. All you have to do now is enjoy and listen to the explanations. 

As soon as the white door to the first room opens (maximum 5 minutes' wait), your museum tour will begin.

You enter the first room. It is quite dark. Hold your audio guide in the air until you hear a beep. The audio guide will then start talking and a large rotating ballotin with pralines will become visible in the middle of the room.

The experience in this room lasts about 3 minutes. The doors to the next room open automatically.

You walk into our jungle. In the middle of the room stands a life-size cocoa tree. Animations are projected onto the cocoa pods hanging from the tree, while the audio guide provides further explanation. Light projections cause the surroundings to change colour regularly.

At the end, the doors to the next room open automatically again

The third room is designed to resemble a large shipping container. It feels as if you are stepping inside a container filled with cocoa beans. In the middle of the room, a film is projected onto the floor. The audio guide tells you more about the harvest of the cocoa pods and their transport to Antwerp, the largest storage port for cocoa beans in the world. 

After the film, the doors open and you walk through to the fourth room, where there is a giant fantasy chocolate machine.

The fantasy chocolate machine shows you the entire production process from cocoa bean to finished product. This involves a lot of sound and light effects.

After about four minutes, the doors open automatically.

You descend the stairs and walk down an old shopping street. There, the audio guide automatically starts narrating again. In this shopping street, you can look around the shop windows displaying Belgian chocolate traditions, with some iconic Antwerp buildings and a beautiful photo of the Antwerp skyline in the background.

At the end of the street, you will see a large double door. This door opens every 3.5 minutes. As soon as the doors open, you walk into a fictional restaurant. Take a seat at one of the tables. You will not need the audio guide in this room. An automatic projection will start on the screens. You will see our petit chocolatier at work, preparing a delicious chocolate dessert. 

After the projection, the second double door of the restaurant will open and you can walk through to the next room. 

After the restaurant, you walk into an old shop. Here you will also find our Wall of Love with success stories from Belgian chocolate makers. In the old shop, you will see lots of Belgian chocolate packaging and examples of campaigns. 

From here, you will find audio tags everywhere. You can scan these yourself with your audio guide. As soon as you have scanned a tag, the story about that subject will start playing. If you want to skip part of the explanation, you can scan the next audio tag during the explanation. The next story will then start playing. If you would like to listen to something again, you can scan the same audio tag a second time.

From the shop, you walk past the royal purveyors to the icon gallery. There you will find the eight icons of Chocolate Nation on display. Using the audio tags, you can discover all the stories behind these Belgian icons.

From the icon gallery, you continue walking and arrive at the chocolate castle. This castle was created in collaboration with PIVA, the famous Antwerp school for chocolatiers. The delicious smell of chocolate greets you here. Next to the castle, you will see our workshop areas.

Continue walking and go back upstairs via the stairs.  You will walk past a wall covered with old chocolate moulds, pass the Forrest Gump bench where you can take fun photos, and continue upstairs via the stairs.

Upstairs, you can observe our packaging team at work in the packaging workshop. Here, the chocolate products made by our chocolatiers are professionally packaged into beautifully finished end products.

At the packing workshop, you turn around and continue walking through our exhibition area. There, you will walk between large placards depicting delightful chocolate scenes. 

When you leave the exhibition area, you will find yourself at our photo booths and our chocolatiers' chocolate workshop. Here you can watch a video and see our chocolatiers at work. They make artisanal chocolate products every day. 

You continue walking along our fact wall, where you can discover 15 different facts about chocolate. You discover the facts by scanning the audio tag each time.

It may be important to note that the numbers on our fact wall are in reverse order. This is because, in the early days of the museum, this corridor had a two-way flow of traffic. For the comfort of our visitors, we subsequently added the exhibition space to the museum tour. This allowed us to separate the flow of traffic so that visitors do not have to cross paths. 

At the end of our fact wall, you will arrive at the sustainability zone. There, you can discover the sustainability story of African cocoa farmers on three television screens.. 

In the corner, you can also take a peek into our bean-to-bar workshop. Here, our chocolatiers can make chocolate entirely in-house, from cocoa bean to chocolate bar.  

To finish, take the stairs down to our chocolate heaven. One of our staff members will be waiting for you there. Hand over your audio guide and you will receive a spoon. Our staff will explain how to operate the machines to taste the chocolate.

You can taste 10 different types of chocolate.

Once you have sampled all 10 flavours, you leave chocolate heaven. You can drop your spoon in the bin, open a large door and walk into the shop. 

You can stay in our shop as long as you like. In addition to our own chocolate products, you will find most of the well-known Belgian chocolate brands. If you want to buy something, you can pay at the cash register.  

When you walk out of the shop you are back in the central entrance hall. Here you can collect your belongings from the lockers and use the sanitary facilities. 

If you would like something to drink or eat, you can visit Octave from Wednesday to Saturday. Octave is Chocolate Nation's food bar and restaurant. You can use Octave's indoor terrace in the central entrance hall or walk through the door in the entrance hall to Octave itself. Enjoy!

We hope that this visual step-by-step plan has given you a clearer picture of what to expect at Chocolate Nation. Be sure to check out our social media channels, where you will find lots of photos and videos.

We look forward to welcoming you to Chocolate Nation. 

© Chocolate Nation 2026