Zaanse Schans Attractions

Hours, prices and access verified by the Zaanse Schans Tours team — last checked 2026-09-05

Take away the eleven windmills and the Zaanse Schans still has six museums, five craft houses and a bakery in a 1658 building. Several of them are free, one of them holds a Monet, and three are shut for restoration. Here is all of it, with addresses.

The museums

Zaans Museum and the Verkade Experience

Where: Schansend 7. What it is: the collection of the Zaan food industry, with the original Verkade biscuit and chocolate machinery still running. Cost: On the Ticket Zaanse Schans, or its own admission. Allow: 60–90 minutes.

The Verkade factory floor is the draw: early 20th-century machines still wrapping and packing, in the building where the Verkade women worked. The museum also holds the story of 1871, when Claude Monet came to Zaandam and painted 25 paintings and 9 sketches of the river, the mills and the wooden houses. Only four of those canvases are in the Netherlands and one is in the Zaan region. The museum publishes its own programme.

The Windmill Museum

Where: Kalverringdijk 30. What it is: an interactive account of what the six hundred mills actually did. Cost: On the Ticket Zaanse Schans. Allow: 45 minutes.

Two things here are worth the visit on their own: an eleven-metre panoramic painting showing every windmill in eastern Zaandam around 1800, and an interactive model of 1,100 Zaanstreek mills. It is also, with the Zaans Museum, one of the two wheelchair-accessible museums on the site.

Museum Zaanse Tijd

Where: Kalverringdijk 3. What it is: Dutch clocks, nearly all of them still running. Cost: On the Ticket Zaanse Schans. Allow: 45 minutes.

The chimes strike on the hour and most of the movements work, whatever their age. The collection runs from 16th-century bell towers to modern electric clocks, and includes pendulum clocks from the era of Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), who invented the thing. The building is a 17th-century weaver's house moved here from Assendelft.

The Albert Heijn Museum Shop

Where: Kalverringdijk 5. What it is: the original grocer's shop the supermarket chain grew from. Cost: Free. Allow: 10 minutes.

In 1887 the 21-year-old Albert Heijn took over his parents' grocery. This is that shop, with its original fittings and stock, and it is a startling thing to walk into — a century of shopping, undone. The listed building is actually two: the shopfront came from the Oostzijde in Zaandam and the house behind it from the Kerkbuurt in Westzaan.

The craft houses

The clog workshop

Where: Kraaienest 4. What it is: a working clog maker and one of the largest clog collections in the Netherlands. Cost: Free. Allow: 20 minutes.

Give the maker a block of poplar and a chisel and you have a clog in about four minutes, and the demonstration runs all day. The shoe museum behind it is the surprise: painted clogs, carved clogs, ice clogs shod with iron, horse clogs and clogs from a dozen other countries. It is in the De Vreede warehouse of 1750, which used to store grain and snuff tobacco.

Liqueur distillery de Tweekoppige Phoenix

Where: Kraaienest 3. What it is: a working distillery with glass retorts and a copper kettle. Cost: Free to enter; the tasting is paid. Allow: 20 minutes.

You can watch the whole process because the vessels are glass. Three liqueurs to taste, from sweet to peppery, and a bar room to drink them in. Distilling belongs here for a reason: the mills ground grain for bread, for beer and for gin.

The Weaver's House

Where: Zeilenmakerspad 8. What it is: the house where sails were woven for boats and for the mills themselves. Cost: On the Ticket Zaanse Schans. Allow: 20 minutes.

Two families and five looms lived in this house in the 18th century, and it was a working weaver's until the early 20th. It was rebuilt on the site in 2015 and staff from the Zaans Museum demonstrate home weaving in it. Currently closed to visitors.

Tiemstra's Coopery

Where: De Kwakels 2. What it is: the complete workshop of a Zaan barrel-making firm. Cost: On the Ticket Zaanse Schans. Allow: 20 minutes.

A barrel has to hold flour, spices, oil, water or gunpowder without leaking, which is harder than it sounds and is the whole point of the trade. This is the fitted workshop of S.R. Tiemstra & Sons of Oostzaan, bequeathed by Jaap Tiemstra when he died in 1999, standing in a warehouse rebuilt here in 1967. Currently closed to visitors.

The Noorderhuis Heritage Chambres

Where: Kalverringdijk 17. What it is: a Zaan merchant's house of about 1650. Cost: On the Ticket Zaanse Schans. Allow: 20 minutes.

Enlarged and embellished over three centuries, and once the home of the merchant Gerrit Jan Honig. Its period room is being restored to its Empire style for the first time in sixty years. Currently closed for that restoration, and opened for the Open Monument Days — see the events page.

Where the food is

The Catharina Hoeve cheese farm

Where: Zeilenmakerspad 5. What it is: a replica Oostzaan farm giving cheese demonstrations and tastings. Cost: Free. Allow: 20–30 minutes.

The demonstration runs in ten languages and the tastings are free, which surprises people who assume it is a sales trap. It is a shop, and it makes its money when you buy something. Almost every guided day out of Amsterdam stops here.

Bakery Museum de Gecroonde Duyvekater

Where: Zeilenmakerspad 4. What it is: an intimate 1658 bakery with its original oven and marbled floor. Cost: Free to enter. Allow: 15 minutes.

The Duivekater it is named after is a sweet Zaanse bread, and you can eat one here along with the rest of the traditional Dutch baking. The building was given to the Zaanse Schans in 1970 by Koninklijke Wessanen and originally stood on the Hazepad in Zaandijk.

Blik op Cacao

Where: Kalverringdijk 25. What it is: a cocoa experience shop opposite a working cocoa factory. Cost: Free to enter. Allow: 20 minutes.

Cocoa beans have been processed on this stretch of the Zaan for two centuries, and the reason the region sometimes smells of chocolate is the factory across the water. Demonstrations, tastings, and you can make a traditional chocolate drink with Zaanse cocoa powder.

What is shut right now, and what is not

Three of the buildings above are closed to visitors as this page is written: the Weaver’s House, Tiemstra’s Coopery and the Noorderhuis Heritage Chambres, which is under restoration. All three are on the Ticket Zaanse Schans, which is worth knowing before you buy one for a day when half of what it covers is behind a hoarding.

The foundation publishes a live open-and-closed board rather than a fixed list. Check it the night before.

Free, paid, and on the Ticket

What costs money at the Zaanse Schans and what does not

Free to walk into	Paid at its own door	On the Ticket Zaanse Schans
The clog workshop and shoe museum	Windmill De Kat	Zaans Museum + Verkade
The Catharina Hoeve cheese farm	The other working mills	The Windmill Museum
The Albert Heijn Museum Shop	The Zaans Museum, on its own	Museum Zaanse Tijd
The bakery museum	Boat trips on the Zaan	The Weaver’s House
Blik op Cacao	—	Tiemstra’s Coopery
The distillery (the tasting is paid)	—	Two mills of your choice

Zaanse Schans windmill tours reach every one of these, and the half-day tours leave enough time to use them.

Frequently asked questions

Are the cheese tasting and the clog demonstration free?

Yes, both. The Catharina Hoeve cheese farm gives its demonstration in ten languages and hands out tastings at no charge, and the clog workshop and its shoe museum are free to walk into. They are shops, and they make their money when you buy something rather than at a door.

Can you go inside the houses?

Only the ones that are open as museums. Most of the timber houses at the Zaanse Schans are lived in, and the foundation asks visitors not to enter houses or gardens. The Noorderhuis, the Albert Heijn shop and the Weaver’s House are the ones you can walk into when they are open.

What is a Duivekater?

A sweet Zaanse bread, and the reason the bakery museum is called de Gecroonde Duyvekater. The bakery dates from 1658, still has its original oven and marbled floor, and was given to the Zaanse Schans in 1970. You can eat one there.

Is lunch included on Zaanse Schans tours?

Almost never. Of the tours listed here, none includes lunch and several say so explicitly in their exclusions; the cheese and liqueur tastings are the food that is included. There is a pancake restaurant on site, a bakery museum selling Duivekater, and a good deal more choice in Zaandam.

How long should you spend at the windmill village?

Ninety minutes covers the dike, the mill panorama, the cheese farm and the clog workshop at a walk. Two to three hours lets you go inside a windmill and a museum without hurrying. A whole day only makes sense if you are pairing it with Zaandam, or with a boat trip on the Zaan.

Is the village suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs?

Partly, and the foundation is candid about the limits. There are step-free bridges and accessible toilets, reserved parking and a wheelchair you can book at the Zaans Museum, but of all the mills only Het Jonge Schaap is wheelchair accessible. The foundation’s own accessibility page lists what works. None of the tours here is sold as wheelchair accessible.

Zaanse Schans Tours sets the guided days side by side, and the windmills page covers the eleven mills.