Living Mills of Holland
The renowned Dutch filmmaker Menno Mennes has been involved with the Dutch culture and history since 2007. Much of his unique material is made available in the WindMills iPhone app.
As no other he succeeds to record pictures about the Dutch Heritage with a lot of athmosphere. With passion and true professionalism Menno Mennes films in the style of our old painters!
Now you have the opportunity to see the most beautiful WindMills of Holland, on-line on your iPhone with much detailed information.
The app contains windmills of the Kinderdijk, Schermerhorn, the Zaanse Schans and many more ... including the windmills painted by Vincent van Gogh.
The collection consists of a unique selection of mills of all Dutch provinces with detailed information (pictures and video). You have the option to select and display the route (often with Street View) from your current location or from a selected province. Also, the weather forecast for that day, evening and next day will be shown.
The data for your location is fully configurable with distances within a radius of 5, 10, 25 or 50 km. You can make selections by province or type of mill sorted by location and distance.
You find background information about the mill, the location, date of construction, category, type and usage, opening hours to the public and if the mill is still operational.
The WindMills app can be configured for the languages Dutch, English, German, French Spanish and Italian.
The Dutch landscape with its mills are inextricably linked to each other. After all, Holland owes its prosperity to these splendid machines…
The Polder draining-mills kept people’s feet dry and the industrial mills made Holland flourish in the 17th century.
Mills are and will always be the icons, the landmarks of Holland, attracting year after year hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world.
The fact that there are still mills is in a way surprising. About 100 years ago, thousands of mills were pulled down (because there was need anymore for them) and it was feared that there soon wouldn’t be any left at all.
However, thanks to the efforts of the association of Dutch Mills, founded in 1923, many mills have been saved from an inglorious end. This why at present, in 2009, some 1,100 wind and water mills still grace the Dutch skyline. However, the association alone cannot keep these monuments alive...it needs help…
Volunteers keep the mills in working order and they deserve all our respect. Without these volunteers most of today’s mills would be lost within ten years.
In the near future more iPhone apps on several Dutch cultural heritage will follow. Subjects will be: old fishing-villages, ancient craft, large flower parades: Holland at its very best.