Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout Netherlands

The Kinderdijk-Elshout mill network is an outstanding man-made landscape that bears powerful testimony to human ingenuity and fortitude over a millennium in draining and protecting an area by the development and application of hydraulic technology. It is located in the north-western comer of the Alblasserwaard. It drained the internal drainage districts of De Overwaard and De Nederwaard until 1950, when the mills were closed. The 19 mills that form this group of monuments are all in operating condition. The Alblasserwaard is bounded by the rivers Lek to the north, Merwede to the south, and Noord to the south. The properties consist of discharge sluices, Water Board Assembly Houses, pumping stations, and brick and wooden mills. Owing to changed technical requirements, the discharge sluices were reduced to two and reconstructed in the mid-1980s.

Continent: Europe

Country: Netherlands

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (I) (II) (IV)

Date of Inscription: 1997

The Water Board Assembly Houses

The Water Board Assembly Houses of De Overwaard and De Nederwaard survive intact. The former was built in 1581 and purchased by the Water Board in 1595 to house the Elshout lockmaster. It was used for several other purposes until 1648, when it became the headquarters of the Water Board. It is a two-storeyed brick structure on a rectangular floor plan with a hipped roof. When it became the Water Board Assembly House the modifications included provision of a meeting room, addition of a stone door-arch decorated with coats of arms of the reeve and board members, new windows, and bedrooms in the attic for members. It underwent drastic alterations in 1918 when the dyke there was raised and widened: 3 m was removed from the front of the house and a new facade built. It was restored in 1981-83. The assembly house of De Nederwaard is a plain rectangular two-storeyed building of the 18th century with a hipped roof.

The Wisbom pumping station was originally an auxiliary steam-driven pumping station for De Overwaard, built in 1868 with four scoop water-wheels on the exterior of the engine house. It was converted to electricity in 1924. At this time some modifications were carried out to the plain gabled brick structure. The Van Haaften pumping station, built for De Nederwaard, also dates from 1868. It was converted to diesel operation in 1927 and the scoop wheels were replaced by Archimedean screws. It was partly demolished in 1971-72 when the J.U. Smit pumping station was built.

Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout Netherlands

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The most characteristic features of this landscape are the windmills, used to pump water from the polders using internal or external scoops into reservoirs, on two levels. At one time there were more than 150 in the Alblasserwaard and Vijfheerenlanden area; this had dropped to 78 in the 1870s but today the total is only 28, of which 16 are in the Kinderdijk area. The eight mills that survive on De Nederwaard were all built in 1738. They are bonnet mills (in which only the top section revolves with the wind), built from brick and with large sails that come within 30 cm of the ground, hence their name, 'ground sailers'. Eight mills are also in place on De Overwaard. All date from 1740 (although one was reconstructed in the 1980s).

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They are bonnet mills and ground sailers but, unlike those on De Nederwaard, they are octagonal in plan and built from wood on brick substructures. The internal iron scoop wheels are slightly larger than those on De Nederwaard, as are the spans of the sails. In addition to the mills on De Nederwaard and De Overwaard; the World Heritage site contains two mills from the Nieuw-Lekkerland polder and one from the Alblasserdam polder. Both of the former are of the same type as on De Overwaard, but De Hoge Molen (The High Mill) has an internal steel Archimedean screw for raising water, rather than a scoop wheel.

The De Blokker mill on the Alblasserdam polder is the only example in this area of the earlier form of mill, the hollow post mill, in which the upper part of the structure that revolves with the wind is considerably larger than that of the bonnet mill. The date of its original construction is unknown, but records show that there has been a mill here since the late 15th century.

Although they went out of use in the late 1940s, all 19 mills are still maintained in operating condition, because they function as fall-back mills in case of failure of the modern equipment. So far as the landscape is concerned, the other most striking feature is the evidence that still survives in two areas of the medieval land-tenure system, based on long thin strip fields. This is a landscape that has not changed significantly for centuries.

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Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area

The historic urban ensemble of the canal district of Amsterdam was a project for a new 'port city' built at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. It comprises a network of canals to the west and south of the historic old town and the medieval port that encircled the old town and was accompanied by the repositioning inland of the city's fortified boundaries, the Singelgracht. This was a long-term programme that involved extending the city by draining the swampland, using a system of canals in concentric arcs and filling in the intermediate spaces. These spaces allowed the development of a homogeneous urban ensemble including gabled houses and numerous monuments. This urban extension was the largest and most homogeneous of its time. It was a model of large-scale town planning, and served as a reference throughout the world until the 19th century.

Continent: Europe

Country: Netherlands

Category: Cultural

Criterion: (I) (II) (IV)

Date of Inscription: 2010

Amsterdam Canal District

The Amsterdam Canal District illustrates exemplary hydraulic and urban planning on a large scale through the entirely artificial creation of a large-scale port city. The gabled facades are characteristic of this middle-class environment, and the dwellings bear witness both to the city's enrichment through maritime trade and the development of a humanist and tolerant culture linked to the Calvinist Reformation. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Amsterdam was seen as the realization of the ideal city that was used as a reference urban model for numerous projects for new cities around the world.

The Amsterdam Canal District is the design at the end of the 16th century and the construction in the 17th century of a new and entirely artificial 'port city.' It is a masterpiece of hydraulic engineering, town planning, and a rational programme of construction and bourgeois architecture. It is a unique and innovative, large-scale but homogeneous urban ensemble.

Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area

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The Amsterdam Canal District bears witness to an exchange of considerable influences over almost two centuries, in terms not only of civil engineering, town planning, and architecture, but also of a series of technical, maritime, and cultural fields. In the 17th century Amsterdam was a crucial centre for international commercial trade and intellectual exchange, for the formation and the dissemination of humanist thought; it was the capital of the world-economy in its day.

The Amsterdam Canal District represents an outstanding example of a built urban ensemble that required and illustrates expertise in hydraulics, civil engineering, town planning, construction and architectural knowhow. In the 17th century, it established the model for the entirely artificial 'port city' as well as the type of Dutch single dwelling with its variety of façades and gables. The city is testimony, at the highest level, to a significant period in the history of the modern world.

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The network of canals in concentric arcs of a circle that forms the basis of the urban layout, along with the radial waterways and streets, survives in its entirety, with its old embankments and historic facade alignments.

The majority of the houses erected in the 17th and 18th centuries are still present in a good general state of conservation. This basic situation is fundamentally healthy for an urban ensemble that is still alive and active. However, streets have sometimes been widened and the facade dwellings rebuilt, notably the current Weesperstraat arterial road. The old civil and hydraulic structures have generally been replaced, tall modern buildings affect some landscape perspectives, especially in the north of the property, and aggressive advertising pollutes the property's visual condition.

A very large number of buildings and structures are protected by national and municipal heritage listing. The situation with regard to protection seems to be complex, within the context of the operation of the Amsterdam Central Borough (the heart of the city), but the procedures that govern protection are complied with. Good awareness on the part of those responsible means that the excesses of urban growth that was at times difficult to control in the recent past seem to be increasingly better managed, notably advertising within the property and the visual impact of tall buildings on the urban landscapes of the property.

All the management measures form an effective and coherent system, within the responsibility of the Central Borough of Amsterdam and with the guarantee of the Bureau of Monuments. A horizontal management and monitoring body for the property has now been implemented, the Amsterdam World Heritage Bureau.

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Aaalsmeer Flower Auction

Aaalsmeer Flower Auction is a central auction market and world interest. Here is the gathering of the flowers of the world because every day, thousands and millions of flowers come to be marketed to the Netherlands and throughout Europe. This market is located in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands, and has reached 990.000 m² area, making this market as the world's largest flower market.

The Muiderslot

The Muiderslot is a castle in the Netherlands, located at the mouth of the river Vecht, some 15 kilometers southeast of Amsterdam, in Muiden, where it flows into what used to be the Zuiderzee. It's one of the better known castles in the Netherlands and has been featured in many television shows set in the Middle Ages.
History

The Muiderslot is currently a national museum (Rijksmuseum). The insides of the castle, its rooms and kitchens, have been restored to look like they did in the 17th century and several of the rooms now house a good collection of arms and armour.