The De Gooyer Windmill

About this place

De Gooyer is the tallest wooden windmill in the Netherlands at about twenty-six and a half metres, and one of eight mills left within Amsterdam's boundaries out of dozens that once ringed the city. It was built in the seventeenth century and moved to its present site in 1814 — which was not unusual: mills are built of timber and can be dismantled and re-erected elsewhere when new buildings block their wind, which happened to this one repeatedly. It ground grain for the breweries around it. The mill itself is private and cannot be entered, but what adjoins it is the practical reason to come: the former public bathhouse next door became in 1985 Brouwerij 't IJ, Amsterdam's best-known craft brewery, with a terrace directly beneath the mill. For a Muslim visitor the value is in the setting rather than the drink — the timber mill, the brick bathhouse and the quiet district around them.