Chocolate’s history, beginning with its "discovery," is uniquely tied to Italy, responsible for many chocolate firsts. Chocolate’s journey to the Old World from the New began with Christopher Columbus. During his fourth and final voyage to the New World, Columbus docked at Guanaja, an island 30 miles off mainland Honduras, Columbus became the first European to set eyes on cocoa beans. 

On August 15, 1502, he and his crew encountered a large Mayan trading canoe filled with an assortment of goods including tools, weapons cotton clothing,  and food.  Never having seen cacao beans before and calling them “almonds,” Columbus and his men were impressed with the obvious high value the natives placed on them.  “They seemed to hold these almonds at a great price; for when they were brought on board ship together with other goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen,” wrote Columbus’s son Ferdinand in 1503 in an account later published as The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus by his Son Ferdinand.