Roman villa

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A Roman villa was a state house built for the upper class in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, similar in form to a hacienda plantation in the Spanish Imperial colony.

Video Roman villa

Typology and distribution

Pliny the Elder (23-79) distinguishes two types of villas: , a country seat that can be easily reached from Rome (or another city) for one or two nights; and villa rustica , a farmhouse estate permanently occupied by servants who are generally responsible for the land. The villa rustica is centered on the villa itself, probably only seasonally occupied. Under the Empire, concentrations of Empire villas grew up near the Bay of Naples, especially on the island of Capri, on Monte Circeo on the coast and at Antium (Anzio). The wealthy Romans escaped from the summer in the hills around Rome, especially around Frascati ( cf. Hadrian's Villa). Cicero is alleged to have no fewer than seven villas, the oldest of them, inherited, near Arpinum at Latium. Pliny the Younger has three or four, among which the example near Laurentium is the most famous of its description.

The empire contains many types of villas, not all of them fancy with mosaic floors and wall paintings. In the provinces, every country house with some decorative features in Roman style can be called a "villa" by modern scholars. Some are such delightful homes - such as Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli - located in the cool hills within easy reach of Rome or - like Villa Papyri in Herculaneum - on a beautiful site overlooking the Bay of Naples. Some of the villas are more like a British or Polish country house, a position visible from the power of a local monarch, like a famous palace rediscovered in Fishbourne in Sussex. Suburban suburban villas also occur, such as the Central and Late Republican villas that encompass the Martius Campus, at that time on the edge of Rome, and which can also be seen outside the walls of the city of Pompeii. These early suburban villas, such as those on the site of the Rome Auditorium or at Grottarossa in Rome, show the beauty and heritage of the suburbana villa in Central Italy. It is possible that these early, suburban villas were in fact the seat of power (perhaps even the palace) of a regional strong man or an important family head ( gentes ). The third type of villa provides an organizational center of large holdings called latifundia, which produce and export agricultural produce; such a villa may not have the luxury. In the 4th century, the villa can connote with holding the farm: Jerome is translated into the Gospel of Mark (xiv, 32) chorion , describes the clump of the Getsemani olive, with villa , without the conclusion that there is no place to live there at all.

Maps Roman villa

Architecture of villa complex

In the first century BC, "classical" villas took on many architectural forms, with many instances using atrium or peristyle, for enclosed spaces open to light and air. Upscale, richer Roman citizens in the countryside around Rome and the whole Empire live in villa complexes, accommodation for rural farming. The villa complex consists of three parts.

• The pars urbana where the owner and his family live. It will be similar to the rich people in the city and will paint the walls.
• The pars rustica where chefs and villa slaves work and live. It is also a residence for farm animals. There will usually be other rooms here that may be used as storage, hospitals and even prisons.
• The villa fructuaria will be the storage space. This is the place where agricultural products are kept ready to be transported to buyers. The storage space here will be used for oil, wine, wheat, wine, and other products from the villa. Other rooms in the villa may include offices, temples for worship, several bedrooms, a dining room and a kitchen.

Villas are often equipped with abandoned bath facilities and many will have central heating under the floor known as hypocaust .

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Social history

A villa might be very grand, like the imperial villa villas, built on a coastal slope overlooking the Bay of Naples in Baiae; others were preserved in Stabiae and Herculaneum by rain and mudslides from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, which also preserved Villa Papyri and its library. Smaller in the countryside, even non-commercial villas operate as very independent units, with associated farms, olive groves, and vineyards. The Roman writers referred to the satisfaction of the independence of their villa, where they drank their own wine and suppressed their own oil, commonly used as topos literature. The ideal Roman citizen is an independent farmer who grows his own land, and agricultural writers want to give their readers the opportunity to connect themselves with their ancestors through the image of these self-contained villas. The truth is not too far from the picture, in fact, even though the profit oriented , the large villas managed by slaves, may be enough to evolve from all the basic ingredients to provide their own consumption.

The late Roman Republic witnessed the explosion of villa development in Italy, especially in the years after the Sulla dictatorship (81 BC). In Etruria, the villas at Settefinestre have been interpreted as the center of one of the latifundia involved in large-scale agricultural production. In Settefinestre and elsewhere, the central housing of the villas is not well laid out. The other villas in the interior of Rome are interpreted in the light of the agrarian treatise written by the elders of Cato, Columella and Varro, all trying to define a suitable lifestyle from conservative Rome, at least in terms of idealists.

The large villas dominate the Po Valley, Campania and Sicilian rural economies, and also operate in Gaul. Villa is the center of various economic activities such as mining, pottery, or horse-rearing as found in northwest Gaul. The villas that specialize in the export of olive oil to the Roman legion in Germany became a feature of the southern Iberian province of Hispania Baetica. Some luxury villas have been excavated in North Africa in the provinces of Africa and Numidia.

Certain areas within easy reach of Rome offer a cool stay in the hot summers. Gaius Maecenas asked what kind of house might suit all seasons. Emperor Hadrian owns a villa in Tibur (Tivoli), in an area popular with the Romans. Hadrian's Villa, dating 123 years, is more like a palace, as Nero's palace, Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill in Rome, is dumped in groups within the planned rural landscape, more like a villa. Cicero has several villas. Pliny the Younger describes his villa in his letters. The Romans found a beach villa: a sketch on the painting wall at Lucretius Fronto's house in Pompeii still showing a row of seafront holiday homes, all with a front porch porch, some rising at the porticoed level to the > altana above that will be blown off in the most oppressive night.

Source of the article : Wikipedia