Lindt Home of Chocolate • Chocolate Museum near Zürich

Just south of Zurich, the Lindt has a chocolate museum at its Kilchberg factory location, delighting chocolate lovers from near and far. The museum is absolutely gorgeous and super informative, with lots of chocolate to taste during the tour. We fully enjoyed our visit and recommend it to anyone visiting or living in the Zürich area.

Location

The Lindt chocolate museum is located in Kilchberg, a suburb south of Zürich. It is easily reached by car or public transportation.

How to get there

By car

Drive to Schokoladenplatz 1, 8802 Kilchberg. There is an underground parking garage, CHF 2/hr. 

By public transport

From Zürich city, take a tram to Bürkliplatz, walk over to the bus stop (the bus doesn’t pick up at the tram stop). Then catch bus 165 to Kilchberg ZH, Lindt & Sprüngli bus stop, which is directly in front of the Lindt Chocolate factory. If you are starting at Zürich main train station, you can take the S8 train to Kilchberg train station, then a 900m walk to the factory.

If you come by public transport, you can get a 10% discount on your entrance ticket if you purchase them together with your train/bus tickets. Learn more.

Ticket prices

In 2023, entrance to the museum costs CHF 15/adult, CHF 10/child aged 8-15 , under 7 free. Discount for students, disabled, and pensioners. If you have a Zürich card, you get a 10% discount.

You should purchase tickets online beforehand, selecting a day and time slot. On weekends and holidays, time slots do sell out, so best to purchase tickets a day or two ahead of time. Audio guides are included in the ticket price and do not need to be purchased separately.

You can also book a guided tour from Zürich including a Zürich city tour, lake cruise and Lindt visit.

Opening Times

The chocolate museum is open every day 10:00 to 18:00. Plan for about 1 – 1.5 hour for the tour. 

Chocolate courses

They also offer chocolate courses at this location, which would be nice to schedule after your chocolate tour. A popular choice is making your own chocolate bar. This courses costs CHF 28/per person and last 40 mins. They usually offer special seasonal chocolate courses for holidays like Christmas and Easter that fill up weeks in advance. See all chocolate courses.

Chocolate tasting

Let’s start with what everyone wants to know: how much “free” chocolate can you eat?! When we were there in Oct 2020, there were three places on the tour where you can sample chocolate.

The first one was in the middle of the tour, with the chocolate fountain shown below. There were three fountains, dark, milk and white. There were plastic wrapped disposable spoons that you hold under the dispenser and pull the lever to get a dollop of chocolate. You can eat as much as you like, only limited by your own shame. We had many spoonfuls, super delicious.

Near the end of the tour, you enter the chocolate tasting room. On the website, they show employees handing out pralines. But when we were there in Oct 2020, they had big bowls of the signature Lindt wrapped truffles, which makes more sense during the pandemic.

But honestly, I was a little disappointed because living in Switzerland, we eat these truffles all the time and even have a huge walls of these truffles at our neighborhood grocery. I was hoping to try something that was a little different than the norm. But ultimately, I can’t argue with unlimited “free” chocolate.

Since we were on a reconnaissance for you, dear readers, we tried every flavor, then went back and got a few of the flavors we really liked, then went back again for our very favorites and left feeling a little sick. It’s a hard life. The raspberry truffles were the surprising favorite of the day.

At the very end end of the tour, you’ll find this Rube Goldberg machine. You scan your entrance ticket to turn on the machine. A big ball rolls down the machine and spits out a chocolate at the end. When we were there, the machine broke about every 3 customers, so the staff had to keep coming over to fix it. At one point, they just handed chocolate to people so they could fix the machine. Hopefully it’s working better when you go.

Photo story

Starting the tour

Now back to the beginning. When you arrive, you’ll enter this big hall with the iconic chocolate whisk. I took this pic at the end of the tour. There is a locker room here if you want to store your stuff. Use the toilets now, I didn’t see any on the tour. But you can exit the tour to use the toilet and come back in.

Take your selfie with the whisk and then go wait in line at the stairs shown below. We arrived 15 mins before our time slot and there were already a few dozen people in line. It’s a crush of people at first even though they try to space it out, only letting a few people at a time. The first rooms were uncomfortably crowded for my taste. My experience was that people rushed through a bit and if you lingered back, the museum was quieter since the next group doesn’t enter the museum for another hour. I thought next time I might come at the half hour, meaning the people who came on time would all have already moved through the first rooms and the next group wouldn’t start for another 30 mins. 

There’s an elevator for anyone with reduced mobility to reach museum on the upper floor. The whole museum is accessible for wheelchairs and strollers, though some places are a bit narrow when a lot of people are there. Their website indicates that they will provide strollers for you. Perhaps they require you to use their strollers that are narrow enough for the museum. Not sure.

At the top of the stairs, they will scan your ticket and give you an audio guide in your desired language. They have a special audio guide for kids, but we didn’t try that version.

Cocoa production

The first section of the museum focuses on the farming and processing of all ingredients for chocolate. It’s well designed and very beautiful.

Many parts of the museum have an audio guide symbol, so many that you can’t possibly listen to them all unless you stayed there for several hours. I found them quite interesting and wanted to listen to the all. But my son was getting bored and didn’t want to wait for me to listen.

There are lots of large video displays telling the stories of the cacao production and interviews with the workers. You listen to them on your personal audio guide, which makes it easier to hear with all the bustle around you.

Chocolate history & culture

Next part of the museum focuses on the history of chocolate consumption, with lots of stories I found super interesting. There are a few interactive elements but not really that engaging for the kids, which was a little frustrating. I wanted to spend more time listening and reading but my son was just pulling me into the next room. 

This room talks about the history of chocolate production and machines, particularly in Switzerland, including this special conching machine invented by Lindt.

Some bits about chocolate marketing and packaging. I loved looking at all the vintage labels.

Chocolate production processes

Everyone is excited entering this room because they can finally eat some chocolate. There are some faux “machines” explaining how chocolate is made, well done but not as interesting as seeing real machines.

My son was so happy to finally find two games to play. This one has you reject imperfect chocolate bars from the assembly line.

In this game, you had to add pralines to the conveyer belt oriented in the correct way. While he played, I went back into the other room to learn more of the history.

The whole museum is really beautiful and fresh.

Chocolate companies

This last room is dark and talks about lots of chocolate companies around the world.

No surprise how many chocolate companies started in our own little country.

Chocolate factory machines

At the end, you walk by a few “real” factory machines. Sometimes they are running but not when we were there. This is the part I would be most interested in, but most companies don’t want to give away their secrets so you don’t get to see so much of the real production.

There are educational signboards along this walkway with videos and helpful information. But again my son was dragging me forward and I couldn’t spend as much time here as I would have liked.

Gift Shop

If you didn’t eat enough free chocolate, you can stock up in the gift shop below which has a few products you can’t get easily in other shops. I got some special hot chocolate that gets thick like in Spain.

The wall of truffles, the same ones you ate on the tour. You fill a bag with your favorite flavors and pay by weight.

Café

Connected to the museum there is a small cafe with sandwiches, drinks, snacks and chocolate treats.

I was planning to get hot chocolate but we were already full from eating too many truffles. Maybe next time.

Ready to book your tour?