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,