Toasted grain — usually maize or barley — milled into a fine flour and mixed with liquid to make a staple food. It kept Fuerteventura fed through centuries of drought and is still eaten across the Canaries, most visibly as gofio escaldado alongside fish. The windmill at Antigua is where you can see how it was ground.

How long do you need at Molino de Antigua?

Around ninety minutes covers the windmill, the cheese museum, the craft centre and the garden at an unhurried pace. It works well as the first stop on a drive inland towards Betancuria, or as a half-day out from Caleta de Fuste.

Is the windmill still working?

The mill has been restored with its milling mechanism in place and is presented as a working example rather than an empty shell. Whether the sails are turning on the day you visit depends on conditions and staffing, so treat a live demonstration as a bonus rather than a guarantee.

Can you buy cheese and crafts there?

Yes. The site has a shop, and the craft centre sells work by island artisans including pottery, palm weaving and embroidery. Majorero cheese is normally available to taste and buy at the museum. It is one of the more reliable places on the island to pick up something genuinely local.

The white stone tower and wooden sails of the restored windmill at Molino de Antigua, with the cactus garden below

Photo: H. Zell (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Antigua, Fuerteventura

Molino de Antigua

A restored windmill, a cheese museum and a cactus garden in one walled courtyard.

Molino de Antigua is built around a restored stone windmill that ground gofio — the toasted grain flour that fed Fuerteventura for centuries — in the village of Antigua, ten minutes inland from Caleta de Fuste. The same walled complex now holds the Museo del Queso Majorero, devoted to the island's protected goat's cheese, along with a craft centre and shop, a cafeteria and a well-planted cactus garden. It is one of the easiest inland stops to fit into a beach holiday.

The windmill and the flour that fed the island

The mill at Antigua is a Castilian-pattern tower windmill, a design brought to Fuerteventura a couple of centuries ago and, by the accounts that describe it, well over a hundred years old itself. Its job was gofio: grain, usually maize or barley, toasted and then ground into a fine flour that could be mixed with water, milk or broth and keep a family going through years when almost nothing grew. On an island this dry, mills were closer to essential infrastructure than to picturesque scenery. This one has been restored with its mechanism in place, so you can see how the sails drove the stones.

The rest of the complex grew up around it. The restored house and its courtyard hold exhibition rooms, and the site has long doubled as a Centro de Artesanía — a craft centre where island work is shown and sold, from pottery to palm weaving and embroidery. There is a cafeteria, a shop and enough shade in the courtyard to sit for a while. It is a small site and it does not pretend otherwise.

Cheese, cactus and how long to allow

The Museo del Queso Majorero shares the site and is why many people come. Majorero is Fuerteventura's protected-designation goat's cheese, made from the milk of the majorera goat, and the exhibition works backwards from the cheese to the island itself: the volcanic geology, the sparse pasture, the herding culture that reaches back to the pre-Hispanic Mahos. It is more interactive than most small Canarian museums, and there is usually cheese to taste and buy at the end.

The garden is the surprise. Cacti and native species from around the world are planted through the grounds, and in the flat white light of the interior it is a genuinely photogenic place to wander. Allow around ninety minutes for the whole site including the museum. Reported hours are roughly 10am to 6pm in summer and half an hour earlier in winter, though it is worth confirming. Combined tickets covering this complex, the salt museum at Salinas del Carmen and the windmill centre at Tiscamanita are sold if you plan to see more than one.