Everything about Villa totally explained
» For other uses, see Villa (disambiguation)
A
villa was originally an upper-class
country house, though since its origins in
Roman times the idea and function of a
villa has evolved considerably. After the fall of the Republic, a villa became a small, fortified farming compound, gradually re-evolving through the
Middle Ages into luxurious, upper-class country homes. In modern parlance it can refer to a specific type of detached suburban dwelling.
Roman
» Main article Roman villa.
A
villa was originally a
Roman country
house built for the upper classes. According to
Pliny the Elder, there were several kinds of villas, the
villa urbana, which was a country seat that could easily be reached from Rome (or another city) for a night or two, and the
villa rustica, the farm-house estate, permanently occupied by the servants who had charge generally of the estate, which would centre on the villa itself, perhaps only seasonally occupied. There was the domus, a city house for the middle class, and insulae, lower class apartment buildings. Petronius
Satyricon describes a wide range of Roman dwellings. There were a concentration of Imperial villas near the Bay of Naples, especially on the Isle of
Capri, at
Monte Circeo on the coast and at Antium (
Anzio). Wealthy Romans escaped the summer heat in the hills round Rome, especially around Tibur (
Tivoli) and
Frascati (
cf Hadrian's Villa).
Cicero is said to have possessed no fewer than seven villas, the oldest of which was near Arpinum, which he inherited.
Pliny the Younger had three or four, of which the example near Laurentium is the best known from his descriptions.
Roman writers refer with satisfaction to the self-sufficiency of their villas, where they drank their own wine and pressed their own oil. This was an affectation of urban aristocrats playing at being old-fashioned virtuous Roman farmers, but the economic independence of later rural villas was a symptom of the increasing economic fragmentation of the Roman empire. When complete working villas were donated to the Christian church, they served as the basis for
monasteries that survived the disruptions of the
Gothic War and the
Lombards. An outstanding example of such a villa-turned-monastery was
Monte Cassino.
Numerous
Roman villas have been meticulously examined in England. Like their Italian counterparts, they were complete working agrarian societies of fields and vineyards, perhaps even tileworks or quarries, ranged round a high-status power center with its baths and gardens. The grand villa at
Woodchester preserved its mosaic floors when the Anglo-Saxon parish church was built (not by chance) upon its site. Burials in the churchyard as late as the 18th century had to be punched through the intact mosaic floors. The even more palatial
villa rustica at
Fishbourne near Winchester was built uncharacteristically as a large open rectangle with porticos enclosing gardens that was entered through a portico. Towards the end of the 3rd century, Roman towns in Britain ceased to expand: like patricians near the centre of the empire, Roman Britons withdrew from the cities to their villas, which entered on a palatial building phase, a "golden age" of villa life.
Villae rusticae are essential in the Empire's economy.
Two kinds of villa plan in Roman Britain may be characteristic of Roman villas in general. The more usual plan extended wings of rooms all opening onto a linking portico, which might be extended at right angles, even to enclose a courtyard. The other kind featured an aisled central hall like a
basilica, suggesting the villa owner's magisterial role. The villa buildings were often independent structures linked by their enclosed courtyards. Timber-framed construction, carefully fitted with mortices and tenons and dowelled together, set on stone footings, were the rule, replaced by stone buildings for the important ceremonial rooms. Traces of window glass have been found as well as ironwork window grilles.
Sub-Roman
As the Roman Empire collapsed in the fourth and fifth centuries, the villas were more and more isolated and came to be protected by walls. Though in England the villas were abandoned, looted, and burned by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, other areas had large working villas donated by aristocrats and territorial magnates to individual monks that often became the nucleus of famous monasteries. In this way, the villa system of
late Antiquity was preserved into the
early Medieval period. Saint Benedict established his influential monastery of
Monte Cassino in the ruins of a villa at
Subiaco that had belonged to Nero; there are fuller details at the entry for
Benedict. Around 590, Saint Eligius was born in a highly-placed Gallo-Roman family at the 'villa' of Chaptelat near Limoges, in Aquitaine (now France). The abbey at
Stavelot was founded ca 650 on the domain of a former villa near Liège and the abbey of
Vézelay had a similar founding. As late as 698, Willibrord established an abbey at a Roman villa of
Echternach, in Luxemburg near Trier, which was presented to him by Irmina, daughter of Dagobert II, king of the Franks.
Post-Roman
In post-Roman times a villa referred to a self-sufficient, usually fortified Italian or
Gallo-Roman farmstead. It was economically as self-sufficient as a
village and its inhabitants, who might be legally tied to it as
serfs were
villeins. The Merovingian Franks inherited the concept, but the later French term was
basti or
bastide.
Villa (or its cognates) is part of many Spanish placenames, like
Vila Real and
Villadiego: a
villa is a town with a
charter (
fuero) of lesser importance than a
ciudad ("city"). When it's associated with a personal name,
villa was probably used in the original sense of a country estate rather than a chartered town. Later evolution has made the Hispanic distinction between
villas and
ciudades a purely honorific one.
Madrid is the
Villa y Corte, the villa considered to be separate from the formerly mobile
royal court, but the much smaller
Ciudad Real was declared
ciudad by the Spanish crown.
Renaissance
In 14th and 15th century Italy, a 'villa' once more connoted a country house, sometimes the family seat of power like
Villa Caprarola, more often designed for seasonal pleasure, usually located within easy distance of a city. The first examples of Renaissance villa dates back to the age of
Lorenzo de' Medici, and they're mostly located in the Italian region of
Tuscany (the "
Medici villas") such as the
Villa di Poggio a Caiano by
Giuliano da Sangallo (begun in
1470) or the
Villa Medici in Fiesole (since
1450), probably the first villa created under the instructions of
Leon Battista Alberti, who theorized in his
De re aedificatoria the features of the new idea of villa. The
gardens are from that period considered as a fundamental link between the residential building and the country outside. From Tuscany the idea of
villa was spread again through Italy and Europe.
Rome had more than its share of villas with easy reach of the small sixteenth-century city: the progenitor, the first
villa suburbana built since Antiquity, was the
Belvedere or
palazzetto, designed by
Antonio Pollaiuolo and built on the slope above the
Vatican Palace. The
Villa Madama, the design of which, attributed to Raphael and carried out by
Giulio Romano in 1520, was one of the most influential private houses ever built; elements derived from Villa Madama appeared in villas through the 19th century.
Villa Albani was built near the Porta Salaria. Other are the
Villa Borghese; the
Villa Doria Pamphili (1650); the
Villa Giulia of
Pope Julius III (1550), designed by
Vignola.
However, many among the most beautiful Roman villas, like
Villa Ludovisi and
Villa Montalto, were destroyed during the late nineteenth century in the wake of the
real estate bubble that took place in Rome after the seat of government of a united Italy was established at Rome.
The cool hills of
Frascati gained the
Villa Aldobrandini (1592); the
Villa Falconieri and the
Villa Mondragone.
The
Villa d'Este near
Tivoli is famous for the water play in its terraced
gardens. The
Villa Medici was on the edge of Rome, on the
Pincian Hill, when it was built in 1540.
List of famous villas
Palladio's usage
» Main article Palladian Villas.
In the later 16th century the villas designed by
Andrea Palladio around
Vicenza and along the
Brenta Canal in
Venetian territories, remained influential for over four hundred years. Palladio often unified all the farm buildings into the architecture of his extended villas (as at
Villa Emo).
Later usage
In the early 18th century the English took up the term. Thanks to the revival of interest in Palladio and
Inigo Jones, soon neo-palladian villas dotted the valley of the
River Thames. In many ways Thomas Jefferson's
Monticello is a villa. The
Marble Hill House in England was conceived originally as "villas" in the 18th-century sense.
In the nineteenth century,
villa was extended to describe any
suburban house that was
free-standing in a
landscaped
plot of ground, as opposed to a 'terrace' of joined houses. By the time 'semi-detached villas' were being erected at the turn of the twentieth century, the term collapsed under its extension and overuse. The suburban "villa" became a "
bungalow" after
World War I in post-colonial Britain, and by extension the term is used for suburban bungalows in both
Australia and
New Zealand, especially those dating from the period of rapid suburban development between 1920 and 1950. The villa concept lives on in southern Europe and in Latin America, where villas are associated with upper-class social position and lifestyle.
Modern architecture also produced some important examples of buildings called "villas":
Further Information
Get more info on 'Villa'.
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