Royal Goedewaagen, Dutch houses, buildings, palaces, farmhouses, KLM, koninklijke

The Zaanse Schans is a delightful old hamlet on the banks of the river Zaan with characteristic green wooden houses, charming styalised gardens, small hump-backed bridges, tradesmen's workshops, historic windmills and engaging little shops.

This enchanting hamlet gives an excellent impression of how a typical Zaanse village must have looked like in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Apart from the cluster of windmills and houses there are also several museums, restaurants and a visitors' centre to be found as well as the possibility of taking a boat trip on the river.

The Zaanse Schans has become one of the top tourist destinations in the Netherlands.

Zaanse Schans

With its traditional green painted houses, warehouses and windmills the Zaanse Schans 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.

Zaanse houses

The development of building construction, architecture, decoration and the use of traditional building materials are all to be found at the Zaanse Schans

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. A variety of greens are used today much as they were used in the past.

This collection of buildings together gives a complete picture of how houses were built in the Zaanstreek during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.