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Zaanse Schans

The Zaanstreek is a centuries old peat district named after the river Zaan. This important waterway in the province of North Holland originated as a natural drain for the surrounding marshy peat area. The Zaanstreek with its many industrial windmills is believed to be the oldest industrial area in Europe. Industrial progress is easily seen at the Zaanse Schans with windmills in the foreground and modern factories on the horizon.
Zaanse Schans with its traditional green painted houses, warehouses and windmills gives the feeling of having stepped back into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however this is not an open air museum but a colourful living and working neighbourhood. The hamlet has not always existed though. Most of the buildings were re-located from other areas in the Zaanstreek in the 1960’s and 70’s as owing to urban development they were under threat of obliteration. They were safely moved to the Zaanse Schans; the exact location where in 1574 Diederik van Sonoy, a Governor in the service of William of Orange, with the aid of local people, erected entrenchments or Schans to hold back the advancing Spanish army.
The 19 listed buildings and remaining historic buildings are all tarred black or painted green. Green painted houses have become traditional in Zaandam but Zaanse green itself does not exist.
Over the centuries more than a thousand of these little wind driven factories flourished along the river Zaan and in the surrounding countryside. Windmills were used for wood sawing, hulling and threshing grains, and the production of amongst other things; seed and nut oil, paint, snuff and mustard. 		zschans_windmills zaan_windmill zschans_oilmill