The Windmills in Amsterdam, Holland

Aug 23 2009

Published by Laura at 1:05 am under General, Sightseeing

For many years, the Dutch struggled to defeat the powerful water taking control of their lives. This special relation with the water could be very well seen in the domains of agriculture and transportation. But, on the other side, the crops were easily flooded. The strategy to eliminate this water was to collect it, contain and then sent back into the sea. Most of the country teritory is polder, that is a major part of Holland teritory was under the sea level, from which excess water was pumped into canals by means of these wind mills. Nowadays, they have been replaced with modern mills, so these old ones remained unfunctional, only for tourism. In the 19th century, in order to avoid flooding, the Dutch had built around 1900 windmills, out of which (the wooden and concrete structure) there are only 1000 left and there are 19 windmills at the village of Kinderdijk.