Ta’ Kola Windmill

Imagine… A bright new morning with a favourable wind for a mill to be operated; the miller letting the locals know by blowing through a triton-shell; the villagers bringing their cereals to be ground into flour. Ta’ Kola Windmill is a unique relic of breadmaking in Gozo, transporting you right back to such a morning.

This is one of the few surviving windmills on the Maltese Islands dating from the Knights’ period. The 200-year-old building is a living testimony to our forefathers’ way of life, marked with hardships and daily struggles. The windmill, much like the local parish church, was one of the main focal points of village life, providing the villagers with flour for the production of bread, the most stable and indispensable food item at the time.

Ta’ Kola Windmill’s construction follows a plan echoed in most Maltese windmills of the period, consisting of a number of rooms on two floors surrounding the centrally-placed cylindrical stone tower. The latter houses the wooden milling mechanism that still incorporates the original circular grinding stones between which grain was crushed into flour.
The exhibits at Ta’ Kola, particularly those in the workshop, belonged to the last miller residing in this windmill and were used to operate and maintain the building and milling mechanism. The first floor is equipped with vernacular furniture meant to recreate a domestic dwelling, common in most local rural areas of centuries past. These rooms, though relatively small in size, were meant to accommodate the miller’s family, a common arrangement during the Knights’ and the British period.

The various items on display in these rooms all represent a trade, a tradition or a piece of local folklore and will most certainly arouse your curiosity and encourage you to delve deeper into their story and meaning.

Ticket can be used to enter both the Ġgantija Archaeological Park and Ta’ Kola Windmill