The Historic Windmill (Historische Muhle) stands on the hill above Sanssouci Park, immediately adjacent to the palace, and is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Potsdam landscape. The current structure is a reconstruction — the original 18th-century mill was demolished in 1945 and replaced with this faithful copy in 1993 — but it works as a working mill and contains a museum about the history of windmills in the Brandenburg region.
The mill is open to visitors and the view from the upper level takes in Sanssouci Park in full panorama. More than the museum, it is the context that matters: standing beside a working windmill looking down on one of Europe's great royal palaces, the combination of the practical and the magnificent tells you something essential about the 18th century and about Frederick the Great's complicated sense of himself.