The Antimachia Windmill

The Antimachia windmill has been in the Amallos family for four generations. The actual building is about 130 to 150 years old having been built in the second half of the nineteenth century, but the original mechanism which is now inside the little museum area is quite older since it was moved from an older windmill. A rough guesstimate by Mr. E. Amallos is that it dates back to the early nineteenth century. The mill was in very good working order until 1982-1983 when it stopped being used on a daily basis by the father of the current owner. In the following years it would be put to work sporadically but without the proper care and repair the actual mechanism got worn out to such an extent that it was necessary to do a complete overhaul. The project started out some five years ago when Mr. E. Amallos decided to finance the restoration of the mill that his forefathers built and cherished. The investment was quite massive and was solely financed by Mr. E. Amallos. From the outset the problems encountered were tremendous. The basic one was that there were no such mills in working order in the Dodekanese nor was there anyone capable of building, restoring or fixing such a structure locally. One had to go to Naxos (an island where the milling tradition has been maintained, to this date) to find technicians and engineers capable of helping in this task. The Dodecanesean workings of the mill are quite different from the Cycladic one, which meant that they had to go back to the drawing board and study the actual mechanism in order to maintain the authentic one in place. The wood necessary to rebuild the mechanism was very difficult to find and was mostly imported from Africa (the original structure was probably built from wood brought from Mount Athos). 

Currently the windmill is capable of grounding around 600 to 800 kgs in roughly eight hours under favorable weather conditions, i.e. a strong enough wind to turn the sails. In the coming years a significant amount of wheat will be produced in order to fully take advantage of the milling capacity of the windmill. This year a small amount, roughly five tons of wheat, has been harvested and will be used to make some flour, and with that some biscuits and other products which will be made available for purchase. The windmill is open for use by other farmers if they wish to grind their wheat in the traditional way. The ground level of the mill has been revamped in order to look like the original room used by the miller to rest. The intermediate floor is a storage facility where the wheat anδ the flour can be kept while on the top floor lies the whole mechanism (production facility) of the windmill.

The windmill is open to the public from 09:00 am to 17:00 pm for the moment. The entrance fee amounts to 2.5 eur.

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