Villa

A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. The cited article explains that since its origins in the Roman villa the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably: after the fall of the Roman Republic villas became small farming compounds, increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity and sometimes transferred to the Church for reuse as a monastery, and they gradually re-evolved through the Middle Ages into elegant upper-class country homes. In the early modern period any comfortable detached house with a garden near a city or town was likely to be called a villa. Buildings recorded in the atlas as villas are grouped under this concept.