Zaandam - Zaanse Schans Open-air Museum

Just north of Zaandam is the Zaanse Schans open-air museum, a little corner of "picturebook Holland": a reconstruction of a Zaanland village of around 1700. The museum was established in 1949 by the Stichting Zaanse Schans, a private organization concerned to preserve old buildings threatened by industrial development. Typical old wooden houses and windmills of the 17th and 18th centuries were taken down, re-erected here and carefully restored. The reconstructed village gives a very vivid impression of life in earlier centuries, largely because almost all the houses are lived in.

At the beginning of the 18th century there were about 500 windmills in the Zaanstreek area. Half of them ground grain, and also mustard, oil-seeds, cocoa, spices and tobacco; the others were sawmills, for in the 17th century the woodworking industry played a major part in the economy of the area. Few now survive; but at Zaanse Schans there are an oil mill, a paint mill, a mustard mill and a sawmill. Other features include a cheese-making dairy, an old bakery, a grocer's shop, a clog-maker's workshop, a pewterer's workshop and the Zaans Uurwerken Museum (Clock Museum), with a collection of old Dutch clocks.

Visitors can take a very attractive boat trip on the Zaan, with the old houses and windmills as a charming backdrop.