In 1920, a family-owned candy shop in Turin was being outsized by rapidly growing factories, so they pivoted to chocolate. Orders expanded rapidly, including one from the queen. More than a century later, Peyrano—who still roasts their beans over olive wood—is a go-to name for tradition and quality. Their specialty, gianduiotti—the little gold-foil-packaged ingots of creamy chocolate and hazelnut paste that date back to Napoleonic times—may be the best version in northern Italy.

After 9 years spent visiting chocolate shops all over, learning where the best beans grow and researching every micro detail, former design consultant Takeyuki Adachi began to make his own bars with just two ingredients: cacao and sugar. The beans from each individual chocolate come from a single origin, so you can taste the differences between beans, and each bar is packaged in traditional Japanese washi paper. Every last bar is still made and packaged by hand.

The oldest chocolate shop in Paris, founded in 1716, still has its original Montmartre location—and several others across Paris. The facade hasn’t changed and the mosaic floors, antique candy jars, and other vintage details evoke another time. While some of the newer creations were invented for the modern sweet tooth, traditions that have been preserved are the Florentines—caramelized sliced almonds atop a delicate dark chocolate disk—and the marrons glacés, or glazed and candied chestnuts.

What started as a small chocolate making project in the corner of a Toronto whiskey distillery has since grown into two standalone stores and a small cacao lab. The King Street West location, in the heart of the old textile district, is the location where the truffles are made. The collection currently totals 26 varieties, including a browned butter and vanilla version, Vietnamese coffee truffles, and types made with both bergamot oil and Arbequina olive oil.

Using large wheels of granite, Mirzam grinds beans from India, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and more slowly over the course of several days, which they say makes the chocolate remarkably smooth without the need for additives. Despite the old-school approach, they operate an airy, modern-industrial, cement-floored studio and shop in Dubai serving items such as chocolate-covered dates, dark chocolate with saffron, rose, and almonds, and milk chocolate with pieces of crispy Arabic rgag bread.

From locations in Lisbon and Porto, this company works to preserve and improve the welfare of their source, a plantation in São Tomé and Principe, off Central Africa’s western coast, once colonized by the Portuguese. Their chocolates lean into pleasantly bitter, sour, spicy, and floral flavors—like chocolate covered ginger or physalis (ground cherries)—and their mini bars of dark chocolate with sour cherries or with Port wine are a perfect pocket treat with which to explore the city.

An American with a background in development economics started this company in Uganda and named it after the location—the town, Kasese, sits at latitude zero on the equator. His goal of making chocolate at origin was a way to support the locals. Today more than 1,000 rural African cacao farmers sell beans to Latitude, which are also dried and fermented locally. They sell bars, coffees, and sweets made with local passion fruit juice, among others, in their cafe, and offer tours of their factory.

This town deep in the south of Sicily is known for its volcanoes and its chocolate—the latter a rustic, textural version said to have come from Aztec tradition by way of the Spaniards who occupied Sicily in the 16th century. Antica Dolceria Bonajuto is the longest-standing shop in Modica, still run by the family who founded it in the 1880s. Cioccolatieri work in a laboratory behind the shop’s old, dark-wood counter. And a little side alley is famous as a spot where patrons enjoy their treats.

Mostly focusing on caramels—but many of them chocolate-covered—this hip, retro, Södermalm neighborhood shop was created in reverence to the 1940s (when caramel was en vogue). In addition to the jars full of buttery caramel, they coat candies in a thin blanket of chocolate sourced from France’s famous Michel Cluizel, including Calabrian liquorice caramels, bourbon vanilla versions, and saffron, orange, and chocolate caramels—all with a crisp-tender bitter chocolate coating.

Founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2006 when the food scene was taking off, The Meadow started as a tiny storefront built from factory-salvaged fir and cedar planks and the owners carried only four things. Till today, salt, good chocolate, cocktail bitters, wine, “pantry goodies,” and fresh cut flowers are the only categories they stock in their locations, including one in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district and a new one in lower Manhattan. The Meadow on Mulberry Street stocks 350 types of chocolate bars.