Every design for Zaandam

In a little wooden house built in 1632, Tsar Peter I of Russia lodged in 1697 while he studied shipbuilding in Zaandam, until the curious locals drove him on to Amsterdam. The Czaar Peterhuisje still stands, preserved as a museum, and a statue of him stands nearby.

That house sums up the town's setting. Zaandam lies on both banks of the river Zaan, just north of Amsterdam, its old core strung along two dykes facing each other across the water. Paths once ran from them into the fields where the windmills stood, and in the Golden Age thousands of mills sawed timber for ships and paper. The statue of the Houtwerker honours that trade. Claude Monet painted the river, its houses and a windmill at Zaandam during his months here, remembered at the MonetAtelier. Nearby, the Zaanse Schans keeps the wooden houses and industrial mills of the Zaanstreek together on the east bank.

Picture a windmill turning on the bank of the Zaan, as Monet painted it: that scene is still Zaandam.