Roman villa
A Roman villa was typically a
Nevertheless, the term "Roman villa" generally covers buildings with the common features of being extra-urban (i.e. located outside urban settlements, unlike the
Typology and distribution
The present meaning of "villa" is partially based on the fairly numerous ancient Roman written sources and on archaeological remains, though many of these are poorly preserved.[2]
The most detailed ancient text on the meaning of "villa" is by
The Romans built many kinds of villas and any country house with some decorative features in the Roman style may be called a "villa" by modern scholars.[8][9]
Two kinds of villas were generally described:
- the villa urbana (e.g. Pliny's villa at Laurentum),[10] or villa suburbana (according to Columella[11]), an estate with little or no agriculture situated in the country, in the suburbs of a town or within close vicinity to a city; and
- the villa rustica (Pliny's villa in Tuscis),[12] a farmhouse estate usually associated with small-scale agriculture or viticulture.[13][14]
Other examples of villae urbanae were the middle and late Republican villas that encroached on the Campus Martius, at that time on the edge of Rome, the one at Rome's Parco della Musica[15] or at Grottarossa in Rome, and those outside the city walls of Pompeii which demonstrate the antiquity and heritage of the villa urbana in Central Italy.[16]
A third type of villa was a large commercial estate called latifundium which produced and exported agricultural produce; such villas might lack luxuries (e.g. Cato) but many were very sumptuous (e.g. Varro).
The whole estate of a villa was also called a praedium,[17] fundus or sometimes, rus.
A villa rustica had 2 or 3 parts:[18][19]
- pars urbana; residential part for the owner
- pars rustica; service, farm personnel and livestock section run by a villicus or farm manager
- sometimes a separate pars fructaria[20] for production and storage of oil, wine, grain, grapes etc..
Under the Empire, many
By the 4th century, "villa" could simply connote an agricultural holding: Jerome translated in the Gospel of Mark (xiv, 32) chorion, describing the olive grove of Gethsemane, with villa, without an inference that there were any dwellings there at all.[22]
Architecture of the villa complex
By the first century BC, the "classic" villa took many architectural forms, with many examples employing an atrium or peristyle for interior spaces open to light and air.
Villas were often furnished with heated bath suites (thermae) and many would have had under-floor heating known as the hypocaust.[23]
Social history
The late Roman Republic witnessed an explosion of villa construction in Central Italy (current regions of Toscana, Umbria, Lazio, and Campania), especially in the years following the dictatorship of Sulla (81 BC).[24]
For example the villa at
In the imperial period villas sometimes became quite palatial, such as the villas built on seaside slopes overlooking the Gulf of Naples at Baiae and those at Stabiae and the Villa of the Papyri and its library at Herculaneum preserved by the ashfall from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79.
Areas within easy reach of Rome offered cool lodgings in the heat of summer. Hadrian's Villa at Tibur (Tivoli) was in an area popular with Romans of rank. Cicero had several villas. Pliny the Younger described his villas in his letters. The Romans invented the seaside villa: a vignette in a frescoed wall at the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto[26] in Pompeii still shows a row of seafront villas, all with porticos along the front, some rising up in porticoed tiers to an altana at the top that would catch a breeze.[27]
Villas were centres of a variety of economic activity such as mining, pottery factories, or horse raising such as those found in northwestern Gaul.[28] Villas specialising in the seagoing export of olive oil to Roman legions in Germany became a feature of the southern Iberian province of Hispania Baetica.[29]
In some cases villas survived the fall of the Empire and into the
See also
- List of Roman villas in Belgium
- List of Roman villas in England
- List of Roman villas in Wales
- Roman villas in northwestern Gaul
- List of Roman villas in Spain
Examples of Roman villas
- Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, Italy
- Villa Armira, near Ivaylovgrad, Bulgaria
- Fishbourne Roman Palace and Bignor Roman Villa in West Sussex, England
- Lullingstone Roman Villa in Kent, England
- Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Italy
- Villa of the Quintilii, Rome, Italy
- Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire, England
- Littlecote Roman Villa in Wiltshire, England
- Villa Rumana in Żejtun, Malta
- Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii
- House of Menander, Pompeii
- Pliny's Comedy and Tragedy villas, Lake Como, Italy
- La Olmeda Roman Villa in Palencia, Spain
- Roman Villa Borg, Germany
- Gallo-Roman villa of Orbe-Boscéaz, Switzerland
- Roman ruins of São Cucufate, Portugal
References
- ^ "Roman domestic architecture (villa) (article)". Khan Academy. Retrieved 2023-08-16.
- ^ Eeva-Maria Viitanen: Locus Bonus – the relationship of the roman villa to its environment in thE vicinity of Rome. ISBN 978-952-10-6450-0 (PDF) http://ethesis.helsinki.i/ Helsinki University, 2010 p. 3
- ^ Varro, de Rustica, 3,2,3–17
- ^ Romizzi, L. 2001. Ville d’otium dell’Italia antica (II sec. a.C. – I sec. d.C.). Aucnus X. p 29–32
- ^ Columella, de Re Rustica
- ^ Cato, De Agri Cultura
- ^ Laura Tedeschi. Ville romane tardoantiche della regione Marche, Master's thesis submitted to obtain the degree of Master in Archeology 2013-2014 https://www.academia.edu/19881526/Ville_romane_tardoantiche_della_regione_Marche
- ^ Marzano, Annalisa. 2007. Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History. Leiden and Boston: Brill. p 3-5
- ISBN 978-0-521-32591-2. Part III East and West: Economy and Society. Chapter 12. Land, labour, and settlement, by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Page 333.
- ^ Pliny epistulae 2.17
- ^ Columella, 1.1.19
- ^ Pliny epistulae 5.6
- ^ "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), VILLA". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2023-08-16.
- ^ "Roman domestic architecture (villa) (article)". Khan Academy. Retrieved 2023-08-16.
- ISBN 978-88-8265-406-1.
- ^ N. Terrenato, 2001, "The Auditorium site and the origins of the Roman villa", Journal of Roman Archaeology 14, 5-32.
- ^ Columella, 1.1.19
- ^ Laura Tedeschi. Ville romane tardoantiche della regione Marche, Master's thesis submitted to obtain the degree of Master in Archeology 2013-2014 https://www.academia.edu/19881526/Ville_romane_tardoantiche_della_regione_Marche p 17
- ISBN 978-0-8018-5904-5.
- ^ Columella I.4 § 6
- ^ Comelius Nepos, Atticus, 25.14.3.
- ^ Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Gethsemane". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- ISBN 978-1-4034-5838-4.
- ^ Van Oyen, A. (2020). The Socio-Economics of Roman Storage: Agriculture, Trade, and Family (pp. 197-228). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108850216.010
- ^ Andrea Carandini, M. Rossella Filippi, Settefinestre: una villa schiavistica nell'Etruria romana, 1985, Panini
- ^ http://pompeiisites.org/en/archaeological-site/house-of-marco-lucretius-frontone/
- ^ Veyne 1987 ill. p 152
- ISBN 0-7156-3225-6.
- ^ Numerous stamped amphorae, identifiable as from Baetica, have been found in Roman sites of northern Gaul.
Further reading
- Becker, Jeffrey; Terrenato, Nicola (2012). Roman Republican Villas: Architecture, Context, and Ideology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-472-11770-3.
- Marzano, Annalisa. 2007. Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
- Potter, Timothy W.. Roman Italy. London, British Museum Publications, 1987.
- Branigan, Keith (1977). The Roman villa in South-West England.
- Hodges, Riccardo; Francovich, Riccardo (2003). Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside. Duck worth Debates in Archaeology.
- Frazer, Alfred, ed. (1990), The Roman Villa: Villa Urbana, Williams Symposium on Classical Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
- Johnston, David E. (2004). Roman Villas.
- McKay, Alexander G. (1998). Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World.
- Percival, John (1981). The Roman Villa: A Historical Introduction.
- du Prey, Pierre de la Ruffiniere (1995). The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity.
- Rivert, A. L. F. (1969), The Roman villa in Britain, Studies in ancient history and archaeology
- Shuter, Jane (2004). Life in a Roman Villa. Picture the Past.
- Smith, J.T. (1998). Roman Villas.
- Villa Villae, French Ministry of Culture Website on Gallo-Roman villas