The Zaanse Schans Windmills

Eleven windmills stand on or beside the Kalverringdijk, and they are not ornaments. They saw timber, press oil and grind pigment, they sell what they make, and their sails turn on wind rather than on a timetable. This is what each one is.

Why the Zaan had around six hundred of them

One invention. In 1594 Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest worked out how to convert the horizontal turn of a windmill’s sails into a vertical sawing stroke, and industrial sawmilling became possible for the first time. Timber that had been cut by hand could now be cut by wind, in quantity.

What followed made the Zaan the oldest industrial region in Western Europe. At its peak around six hundred mills worked here at once, sawing wood and milling paper, spices, paint pigment, oil, flour and cocoa; 26 shipyards launching between 100 and 150 ships a year went down the slipways in the 17th century on the timber they cut. The history page follows that story properly.

The mills you can go inside

Each charges its own admission, or comes as one of the two mills included with the Ticket Zaanse Schans. The admission page has the arithmetic.

De Kat

Built: 1664. Trade: paint mill. Where: Kalverringdijk 29. Inside: yes, when it is open.

The only working paint mill in the world still milling pigment and chalk for artists and restorers.

De Huisman

Built: 1786. Trade: snuff and spice mill. Where: Kalverringdijk 23. Inside: yes, when it is open.

Since 1955 it has stood on top of the 1908 spice warehouse Indië’s Welvaren, and three pairs of stones still grind tropical spices below it.

Het Jonge Schaap

Built: 1680, rebuilt 2007. Trade: sawmill. Where: Kalverringdijk 31a. Inside: yes, when it is open.

A six-sided over-wheeling sawmill, a shape unique among the 350-odd sawmills the Zaan once had. The original went in 1942; the replica was raised using 17th-century methods.

De Bonte Hen

Built: 1693. Trade: oil mill. Where: Kalverringdijk 39. Inside: yes, when it is open.

It has survived several lightning strikes where most of the region’s six hundred mills burned. Restored between 1973 and 1978, and it still presses oil.

De Zoeker

Built: about 1610. Trade: oil mill. Where: Kalverringdijk 31. Inside: yes, when it is open.

A polder mill first, an oil mill by 1672, a paint mill from 1891 to 1901, then oil again. Its 18-tonne cap was moved here in one piece in 1968, hoisted over railway lines and then floated across the Zaan.

Paltrok, smock and hollow post — the three shapes

Three quite different machines stand within four hundred metres of each other here, and telling them apart is most of what makes the dike interesting.

• The smock mill is the shape most people picture: an octagonal timber tower with a gallery round it, and only the cap turns to face the wind. De Bonte Hen, De Kat and De Zoeker are all this.
• The paltrok turns entirely. Its work floor is open on three sides and the whole mill is wheeled round on a rolling ring, which is why it is sometimes called an under-wheeler. The Zaan once had about two hundred; De Gekroonde Poelenburg is the survivor here.
• The hollow post mill is the small one. It sits on top of a barn and saws thin planks, and it was a sideline rather than a business. Het Klaverblad brought the type back after it had gone entirely.

Which mill to choose if you only climb one

De Kat, and it is not close. It is the only working paint mill in the world, it has been milling pigment since 1664, and what you see inside is a business rather than a display — chalk and pigment being ground for artists and restorers who buy it. The whole building shakes when the stones are turning, which is the part nobody expects.

Het Jonge Schaap is the choice if the stairs are a problem: it is the one mill here a wheelchair can enter, and its own story — a 1680 sawmill demolished in 1942 and rebuilt in 2007 using 17th-century methods — is as good as any of them.

The mills you can see but not enter

Four more stand within sight of the dike and are worth knowing by name, because they are the ones people photograph and then cannot identify.

De Gekroonde Poelenburg

Built: 1869. Trade: paltrok sawmill. Where: Kalverringdijk. Inside: not open to the public.

A paltrok — a type the Zaan once had two hundred of, its work floor open on three sides and the whole mill wheeled round a rolling ring.

Het Klaverblad

Built: 2000–2005. Trade: hollow post sawmill. Where: Kalverringdijk. Inside: not open to the public.

A lost small type brought back by hand by the miller Ru Pos, and named for his four daughters.

De Os

Built: before 1663. Trade: oil mill. Where: Zaanse Schans. Inside: not open to the public.

One of the oldest industrial mills the Zaan ever had. Wind-driven until 1916, then diesel-powered until 1931 — the moment the Zaan mills stopped being the engine.

De Bleeke Dood

Built: 17th century. Trade: flour mill. Where: Zaandijk. Inside: not open to the public.

The oldest smock mill still standing in the Netherlands, and the village mill of Zaandijk. Flour and bread mix are sold in the shop on Fridays.

De Ooievaar

Built: —. Trade: oil mill. Where: Zaanse Schans. Inside: not open to the public.

Brought from Assendelft, and standing beside the Duyvis nut works — a firm that began as an oil mill itself.

The two mini-mills

Easy to walk past, and both real. De Hadel is a meadow mill from the late 19th century, moved to the Zeilemakerspad in 1968 from Midwoud in North Holland, where it pumped water out of a polder. De Windhond is the last crushed-stone mill from the Zaan region, with nine pounders and a grindstone; young men built these on farmyards and barns to make a little money grinding broken sandstone millstones into abrasive sand.

Frequently asked questions

The museums and workshops cover everything on the site that is not a mill, and Zaanse Schans tours from Amsterdam list the guided days that reach them.