Daudet's Windmill

Ribet or St Pierre wind-mill, as it was formally called, was built in 1814 in Provence, France and ground wheat during one century. In 1935, the association "Alphonse Daudet's Friends" , decided to restore it and create a museum dedicated to "Les Lettres de mon Moulin", Daudet's most famous work which is a collection of wryly humorous stories admired by Flaubert, Dickens, and Henry James. It evokes the vital rhythms of Provençal life and Daudet’s youth in the mid–nineteenth century. The building is a symbol of the writer and his work.

Daudet is as important to the French as the windmills of Cervantes' Don Quixote are to the Spanish. The stories won French hearts, and they have now become an essential part of French cultural heritage. The tower windmill is typical of those found throughout southern France. Unlike windmills in northern Europe, those of southern France use a sharply peaked conical cap and blades with sails of equal dimensions on either side of the stock or blade spar.