A new immersive historical tour reveals the dark and depraved history of chocolate and its sensational impact in Hogarth’s London.

Historical media company Unreal City Audio have teamed up with purveyor of luxury flavoured chocolate Cocoa Hernando to produce an immersive whirlwind tour of the decadent chocolate houses of Georgian London over the weekend of the London Chocolate Festival at the South Bank Centre.

The 11.30am and 2pm tours will run over the weekend of the 14th-15th December and cost £15 per person, beginning by St James’s Church in Picadilly (W1J 9LL). After the tour, the guide will lead the group across the Thames to the festival. Book via: here

Set amidst the luxury shops, mighty townhouses and royal palaces of Mayfair and St James’s, this musical, semi-theatrical tour will reveal how “a divine, celestial drink called chocolate” (as one early sampler put it) conquered Baroque Europe and corrupted the most fashionable quarter of London, spawning establishments like White’s Chocolate House, a whirlpool of sedition, depravity, and kamikaze gambling immortalised in Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress.

The 90-minute tour is led by charismatic young London historian Dr Matthew Green, author and presenter of UCA’s critically acclaimed Coffeehouse Tour, and there’ll be a supporting cast of Aztec slaves, Spanish conquistadors, nihilistic dukes and rakish gamblers hidden along the route. Their performances will be set to beautiful violin music from the era.

Dr Green has uncovered some mouthwatering recipes for 17th and 18th-century hot chocolate, the most extravagant of which — Monsieur St Disdier’s Baroque Chocolate (1692) — will be served on the tour, courtesy of Cocoa Hernando. Shot through with a concoction of exotic spices, it will be a mind-blowing cup of hot choc. With dramatic performances, transportive violin music, and a cornucopia of historical anecdotes — not to mention the best chocolate in town — this is an unmissable Christmas treat.