Zaanse Schans Dutch timber houses in red and white Postcard

Send your friends a nice postcard with this photo of the best known open air museums of the Netherlands. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit this place every year. A great sample of wooden houses along a canal. When you're on holiday or vacation in Holland visit the famous wooden houses of the Zaanse Schans open air museum. These are real original wooden timber houses of the Golden Age of Holland. This architecture is as Dutch as it gets. Prepared to be dazzled by a lot green, red and white. The Zaan region derives its name from the river Zaan, a wide and lazy wetland river along which many settlements can be found. Due to the rather poor farmland which really is only fit for some cows, the Zaan people applied themselves to industry. And before the steam age that meant windmills. First they started with whaling and the processing of its parts. Later they added timber from the Baltics. Now the Zaan region is a major producer food items, either in bulk or in finished products like cookies, snacks and chocolate. In de Zaanse Schans you will see a lot of traditional economic activities. For instance a mustard windmill and a saw mill.