Roman villa

The Roman Empire contained many villas which were rather like country houses, though suburban villas on the edge of cities were known), such as the late Republican villas that encroached on the Campus Martius then on the edge of Rome. A villa might be quite palatial, such as the imperial villas built on seaside slopes around the Bay of Naples, some of which were preserved at Stabiae and Herculaneum by the ashfall from Vesuvius in 79 A.D.. Deeper in the countryside, villas were largely self-supporting, with associated farms, olive groves and vineyards. Large villas dominated the rural economy of the Po valley, of Campania and Sicily, and were found in Gaul. Villas specializing in the sea-going export of olive oil to Roman legions in Germany were a feature of the southern Iberian province of Baetia. Some luxurious villas have been excavated in North Africa, in the provinces of Africa and Numidia. Certain areas within easy reach of Rome offered cool lodgings in the heat of summer. The emperor Hadrian had a villa at Tibur (Tivoli), in an area that was popular with Romans of rank. Hadrian's Villa (123 AD) was more like a palace. Cicero had several villas. Pliny described his villa in letters. As the Roman Empire collapsed in the 4th and 5th 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 5th century, in other areas large working villas donated by aristocrats and territorial magnates to individual monks 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 in the ruins of a villa at Subiaco that had belonged to Nero; there are fuller details at the entry for Benedict. About 590 Saint Eligius was born in a highly-placed Gallo-Roman family at the 'villa' of Chaptelat near Limoges, in Aquitaine (now France). 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. Some of the known Roman villas are:\n* Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, Italy\n*Fishbourne palace villa in West Sussex, England\n* Lullingstone villa in Kent, England\n* Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, Italy. See also: Roman architecture Category:Ancient Roman architecture