The Windmill

“Far by the windmill, the old ruin, when the sun is setting, decked in all his glory, the boys go running, looking for pumice stones; and lad and lasses, for sweet furtive glances; and old men lingering for memories. Old age is calm and youth considerate.”- Kostis Palamas “At the Windmill”

Everyone who has spent some days on an Aegean island will have been impressed by the elegant beauty of the windmills that dominate the hills. Whether well preserved or in ruins, windmills attract the glance of the passer-by who happens to walk by and observe their constructional particularity.

When our ancestors moved from the exclusive use of animals to more complex mechanical constructions, that led tο production increase with less human effort. Windmills were used to grind grain, drain the soil in order to create fertile lands, draw water from wells, rivers and lakes and generate electricity (from the 19th century onwards). Depending on local needs, they were also used for various other tasks, such as melting olives into olive mills, peeling off the rice, grinding cocoa seeds, sugar cane and beetroots for sugar production.

Windmills can be found in different variations but mostly they are cylindrical, stone or wooden, two-storey buildings, on the upper floor of which was the shaft and the drive system by means of sails that transfer the movement to the millstones with a pair of cogwheels. On the lower floor, the milling and storage of the grains or other works, depending on the use (grinding, pumping, drainage), used to take place.

The first use of the windmills in human history is uncertain, but it was probably widespread among the ancient peoples of the Near East. In ancient Greece the engineer and inventor Heron from Alexandria built a horizontal axis windmill with four sails already dating back to the 1st century. A.D. However, windmills were mentioned much later in written sources, with the first mention found in texts from Persia and Mesopotamia of the 7th century A.D., China and Arabia of the 8th century and 9th century A.D. correspondingly. 

In southern Europe the windmill was probably introduced by the Arabic peninsula (although there is also the opinion among the historians that they appeared independently, being an evolution of the ancient windmills) either through the Byzantine Empire, during the Frankokratia, via the Crusaders or via Chinese explorers. In the 12th century the first windmills appeared in France (at the beginning of the 14th century the tower windmill was also developed in France) and England, spreading all around the Byzantine Empire from the 15th century and around 1500 they were also introduced in the Netherlands as a measure of the flood protection system. 

The use of the wind energy in Greece was quite widespread due to the wind potential of the Greek geomorphology. Windmills were used all around the Greek territory to produce flour, supply the passing ships and pump water. In Santorini they used to grind split pea beans (fava), while in Chios and Syros they used to rub pine and oak husks for the tanneries. Τhe residents of Rhodes, Kos and Crete used the windmills as threshers and pumpers for centuries . It is noteworthy that on Milos island there was a windmill that grinded sulfur for the mines. The most widespread windmill type in Greece (mainly in the Aegean) was the tower mill with a horizontal axis and vertical vanes with many variations, depending on the region and local needs. 

Ιn the middle of the 20th century the old type windmills gradually began to be abandoned as the new energy sources took their place (fossil fuels, electricity and wind turbines). Most of the old windmills today stand dilapidated to remind us a more romantic era, waiting for a Don Quixote or a group tourists to walk by or rest under their shade. In this Thematic Exhibition we are going to take a deeper look at the windmills via works of painting, photographs and scale models.