Windsor

A Dutch windmill of 1843 turned neo-gothic hunting lodge — the romantic ruin by the D8 near Siřejovice, a cultural monument left to decay since the late 19th century.

Windsor started life prosaically: a Dutch-type windmill built in 1843 of pale opuka stone and brick, twelve metres tall, grinding grain until 1870. Then the Tschinkel brothers — the chicory-coffee magnates — bought it and dressed it up as a neo-gothic hunting lodge with an English name, Windsor. Fashion moved on, the lodge was auctioned off by the late 1880s and never found a purpose again; what stands in the field near the D8 today is the round shell of the tower, protected as a cultural monument since 1964 but privately owned and closed. It makes a strange, memorable silhouette — a make-believe castle grown from a windmill, visible to every driver on the motorway who has no idea what it is.