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Mills in the Kinderdijk-Elshout area,
Netherlands © UNESCO |
Most of the Cultural Heritages in the Netherlands were created to manage water and land.
Schokland was once a peninsula and an island; then following the draining of the Zuider Zee, it became reclaimed land in the 1940s. In the Kinderdijk-Elshout area, the drainage of land for agriculture and settlement began in the Middle Ages. The site has dikes, reservoirs, pumping stations, administrative buildings and windmills.
Beemster Polder, dating from the early seventeenth century, is the oldest area of reclaimed land in the Netherlands, planned on classical and Renaissance principles. The Defence Line of Amsterdam controls encroaching waters, with forts and an intricate system of canals and locks. The Woudagemaal is the largest steam-pumping station. It was built in 1920 to protect the people and land against the natural forces of water.
To live on the coastal lowlands with constant floods, the Dutch developed outstanding technology and changed the harsh landscape into a habitable place.
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