Villa
For other uses, see Villa (disambiguation)The idea and function of a
villa has evolved considerably since its invention towards the end of the
Roman Republic.
Main article Roman villa.A
villa was originally a
Roman country
house built for the upper class. According to
Pliny the Elder, there were two 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 center on the villa itself, perhaps only seasonally occupied. 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
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, 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 vinyards, 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 center 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.
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.
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.In Spain, a
villa is a town with a
charter (
fuero) of lesser importance than a
ciudad ("city").Later evolution has made the distinction between
villas and
ciudades a purely honorific one.
Madrid is the
Villa y Corte, but the much smaller
Ciudad Real was declared
ciudad by the Spanish crown.
Villa (or its cognates) is part of many Spanish placenames, like
Vila Real and
Villadiego.When it is associated to a
person name, it was probably used in the original sense of a country estate rather than a chartered town.
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.
Rome had more than its share of villas with easy reach of the small 16th century city:
Villa Madama, the design of which, attributed to Raphael, was 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
Villa Borghese with its famous gardens; the
Villa Doria Pamphili (1650); the
Villa Giulia of
Pope Julius III (1550), designed by
Vignola.
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.
Main article Palladian Villas.In the later 16th century the villas designed by
Andrea Palladio round
Vicenza and along the
Brenta Canal in
Venetian territories, remained influential for over four hundred years. Palladio often unified all the farmbuildings into the architecture of his extended villas (as at
Villa Emo).
In the early 18th century the English took up the term. Thanks to the many Palladio extimators, like
Inigo Jones, soon neo-palladian villas dotted the valley of the
River Thames. In many ways Thomas Jefferson's
Monticello is a villa.
The following English houses were conceived originally as "villas" in the 18th-century sense:
*
Marble Hill HouseIn the 19th 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 20th century, the term collapsed under its extension and overuse. The suburban 'villa' became a
bungalow after
World War I in post-colonial Britain. The villa concept lives on in Southern Europe and in Latin America being associated with statements about social position and lifestyle.
The contemporary architecture however has some important examples of buildings called "villas":
*
Fallingwater by
Frank Lloyd Wright*
Villa Savoye in
Poissy,
France, by
Le Corbusier*
Villa Tugendhat in
Brno,
Czech Republic, by
Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe*
List of famous villas*
Garden real estate
