Mediterranean Villas

The purpose of Mediterranean Villas was originally to showcase some of the most luxurious and beautiful villas of Italy and the Mediterranean region. We are developing for this site featured real estate villas and properties for sale or rent. Mediterranean villas are legendary for their luxurious architecture, beautiful gardens and scenic vistas.

History and Meaning of Villas:

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.

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.

Villas as Vacation Rentals:

Today many vacation rental properties are referred to as villas. This is especially true in France and Italy, and in the French influenced islands of the Caribbean such as St Barthelemy, St Martin, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Palladio's usage of Villas:

In the later 16th century the villas designed by Andrea Palladio around Vicenza, Italy, 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).

See Palladian Villas

Mediterranean Revival Style architecture:

Mediterranean Revival Style architecture is an eclectic design style that was first introduced in the United States around the turn of the nineteenth century, and came into prominence in the 1920s and 1930s. The style evolved from "rekindled interest in Italian Renaissance palaces" and seaside villas dating from the sixteenth century, and can be found predominantly in California and Florida due to the popular association of these coastal regions with Mediterranean resorts.

Architects August Geiger and Addison Mizner did much to popularize this style in Florida; Sumner Spaulding and Paul Williams did likewise on the West Coast. Structures are typically multi-story and based on a rectangular floor plan, and feature massive, symmetrical primary façades. Mediterranean Revival is generally characterized by stuccoed wall surfaces, flat or low-pitched terra cotta and tile roofs, arches, scrolled or tile-capped parapet walls and articulated door surrounds. Feature detailing is occasionally executed in keystone.

Balconies and window grilles are common, and are generally fabricated out of wrought iron or wood. Ornamentation can range from simple to dramatic, and may draw from a number of Mediterranean references. Classical, Spanish, or Beaux-Arts architecture details are often incorporated into the design, as are lush gardens.

The style was most commonly applied to hotels, apartment buildings, commercial structures, and even modest residences. Mediterranean Revival was one of several architectural styles utilized extensively by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads when designing their depots in California.

List of example structures:

• Hayes Mansion in San Jose, California, completed 1905
• Villa Vizcaya in Miami, Florida, completed in 1914
• Presidio Building 35 in San Francisco, California, completed in 1912
• The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, 1921 (demolished)
• (Former) Southern Pacific Railroad Depot in Glendale, California, completed in 1923
• Freedom Tower in Miami, Florida, completed in 1925
• Miami-Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, completed in 1926
• Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, completed in 1926
• Cà d'Zan, former John Ringling estate in Sarasota, Florida, completed in 1926
• Francis Marion Stokes Fourplex in Portland, Oregon, completed in 1926
• Pasadena City Hall in Pasadena, California, 1927
• Greenacres (Former Harold Lloyd Estate) in Los Angeles, California, completed in 1928
• Casa Casuarina (Versace Mansion) in Miami Beach, Florida, 1930
• Santa Fe Railway (now Amtrak and Metrolink) depot in Fullerton, California, completed 1930
• Beverly Hills City Hall in Beverly Hills, California, 1932
• Cabrillo Beach Bath House in San Pedro, California, completed in 1932
• (Former) Santa Fe Railway Depot in Orange, California, completed in 1938
• Beverly Shores Railroad Station, 1928

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 are 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.

References

1. Gustafson, Lee and Phil Serpico (1999). Santa Fe Coast Lines Depots: Los Angeles Division. Acanthus Press, Palmdale, CA. ISBN 0-88418-003-4.
2. Newcomb, Rexford (1992). Mediterranean Domestic Architecture for the United States. Hawthorne Printing Company, New York, NY. ISBN 0-926494-13-9.
3. Signor, John R. (1997). Southern Pacific Lines: Pacific Lines Stations, Volume 1. Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society, Pasadena, CA. ISBN 0-9657208-4-5.
4. Nolan, David. The Houses of St. Augustine. Sarasota, Pineapple Press, 1995.
5. Wikipedia.org