TA' GANU WINDMILL

Ta' Ganu Windmill
In Naxxar Road

On Naxxar Road, one of the busiest shopping thoroughfares of Birkirkara, stands one of a couple of still existant windmills that in times past were part of the local landscape -and a very useful one at that. This particular windmill is known as ‘Ta' Ganu’ and was built during the principate of Portuguese Grandmaster Antonio Manoel de Vilhena, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century.

When windmills fell into disuse because of the introduction of mechanized milling in the nineteenth century, times looked grim for this cylindrical-topped cubic building, and even after World War II it was still serving as a blacksmith’s workshop.

But recently, the building itself has been restored, and in the absence of the old machinery, a new power, that of artist ceramist Gabriel Caruana, keeps the mill alive turning out his own work and exhibiting those of other artists who express themselves in the modern idioms.

Information taken from www.birkirkaraonline.com