Kato Mili Windmills, Mykonos — windmill
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Kato Mili Windmills, Mykonos

  • 2 min read
  • 37.444° N 25.326° E

Interesting facts

  • At their peak about 28 windmills worked across Mykonos, and the Kato Mili group above the harbour was the largest cluster, with around ten mills.
  • Each mill carried twelve wooden spokes dressed with triangular sails of heavy cotton cloth, now long gone from the surviving frames.
  • Work inside was stacked by floor: grain was weighed and stored at ground level, flour collected on the middle floor, and the millstones turned at the top.
  • The roof cap carrying the sails could be turned on a central wooden axis, so the miller could swing the mill to face the wind.
  • Much of the flour was baked into paximadi, hard twice-baked rusks that kept for months and fed sailors on long voyages.
  • Several of the island's old mills have been converted into homes or used to keep Mykonos's heritage documents.
  • Just offshore from the mills lies Camel Rock, a rock formation named for its resemblance to a camel resting in the shallow water.

Why it is worth it

On the western edge of Chora, the main town of Mykonos, a row of white windmills stands on a low ridge above the sea. The islanders call them Kato Mili, the "lower mills", and from the harbour of Alefkandra they read as a single silhouette: squat cylinders, conical caps of wood and straw, and bare spoked sails pointing into the wind. Seven stand on this hill; across the island sixteen old mills survive in all.

Their shape is the standard Cycladic type, and it was shaped by the weather. The towers are round, two storeys high, built of stone with whitewashed walls and only the smallest openings, and most face north, into the wind that blows hardest over the island for much of the year. Construction began under Venetian rule in the sixteenth century and went on into the early twentieth. For centuries the mills ground wheat and barley, and they were among the island's chief sources of income until milling faded out around the middle of the twentieth century. The canvas that once filled the wooden frames has long gone, which is why the sails now look like skeletal wheels.

The setting is half the appeal. Directly below the ridge lies Little Venice, a line of old fishermen's houses whose balconies hang out over the water, the first of them built in the mid-eighteenth century. At sunset the mills catch the last light while the town below falls into shadow — the view that has made them the emblem of the island. Elsewhere in town, the restored Bonis windmill houses a small agricultural museum on how the island once farmed and milled its grain.

Getting there

The mills stand at the edge of Mykonos town (Chora), a short walk from the old harbour. Mykonos Island National Airport (JMK) is about 2 km away, with short flights from Athens. Ferries and high-speed boats arrive at the old port and the new port at Tourlos from Athens and neighbouring islands.

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On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in South Aegean 9The Most Beautiful Places in Greece 58The Most Beautiful Windmills 4The Greatest Engineering Wonders in Greece 5The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

The Mykonos windmills are an iconic feature of the Greek island of the Mykonos. The island is one of the Cyclades islands, which neighbour Delos in the Aegean Sea. The windmills can be seen from every point of the village of Mykonos, the island's principal village, which is frequently called the Chora on Greek islands. The windmills are the first thing seen when coming into the harbour of Alefkandra, as they stand on a hill overlooking the area. Most windmills face towards the North where the island's climate sources its strongest winds over the largest part of the year. There are currently 16 windmills on Mykonos of which seven are positioned on the landmark hill in Chora. Most of them were built by the Venetians in the 16th century, but their construction continued into the early 20th century. They were primarily used to mill wheat. They were an important source of income for the inhabitants. Their use gradually declined until they ceased production in the middle of the 20th century. The architecture of each of them is similar, all have a round shape, white colour and a pointed roof and very small windows. Such windmills are found in almost all Cyclades islands. One of these windmills has been transformed into a museum. The whole village of Chora and part of the harbour are visible from this point.

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