Picture of the day - April 17, 2008

Mühle am Wall: Germany's most famous historic windmill

Photo courtesy of Attilio Ivan. If you're like most people, when you see a photo of a historic windmill you automatically assume that you're looking at a scene from Holland. After all, most of us grew up reading about how that country's landscape is covered with those picturesque structures. While it's true that the Dutch countryside indeed features a lot of them, there are actually windmills to be found all over the European continent. Long recognized as a way to harness the power of the wind to grind wheat into flour, pump water out of low-lying lands and perform many other essential, but mundane tasks, windmills were constructed all across Europe centuries ago. The famous windmills of La Mancha in central Spain inspired Miguel de Cervantes to write Don Quixote de La Mancha which is widely recognized as one of the world's greatest works of fiction. The humorous adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza have provided fodder for the imaginations of countless young boys and girls who were required to read the novel as a dreaded classroom assignment but soon came to love the wacky "Knight". Today's picture features the famous windmill called Mühle am Wall. A popular tourist attraction which stands in the center of the city of Bremen, it is one of only a relative handful of historic windmills that still stand in all their glory in the country of Germany.   Click here to comment on this picture.   Visit the POTD Archives for previous "Pictures Of The Day"!     Submit a photo of your own!                                 Place the "Picture of the Day" on your website, for free! Why I publish the "Picture of the Day"