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44-567: Villa Boscoreale is a name given to any of several Roman villas discovered in the district of Boscoreale , Italy. They were all buried and preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD , along with Pompeii and Herculaneum . The only one visible in situ today is the Villa Regina, the others being reburied soon after their discovery. Although these villas can be classified as "rustic" ( villae rusticae ) rather than of otium due to their agricultural sections and sometimes lack of

88-605: A Roman villa near the city of Trier (now Echternach in Luxembourg ) which Irmina of Oeren , daughter of Dagobert II , king of the Franks , presented to him. Atrium (architecture) In architecture , an atrium ( pl. : atria or atriums) is a large open-air or skylight -covered space surrounded by a building . Atria were a common feature in Ancient Roman dwellings , providing light and ventilation to

132-470: A building's upper stories more quickly. Another downside to incorporating an atrium is that it typically creates unused vertical space which could otherwise be occupied by additional floors. One of the main public spaces at Federation Square , in Melbourne , Australia, is called The Atrium and is a street-like space, five stories high with glazed walls and roof. The structure and glazing pattern follow

176-591: A double gold chain. A thousand gold coins were still in the remains of a leather bag. At the time of the eruption it was probably one of the safest rooms in the villa where the owner gave the order to a trusted man to hide it for better times. All the treasures were smuggled out to France via the Rothschild Family and sold. The excavations of the villa were resumed in 1896 by Angiolo Pasqui . [REDACTED] Media related to Archaeology of Boscoreale at Wikimedia Commons Roman villa Nevertheless,

220-457: A dynamic and stimulating interior that provides shelter from the external environment while maintaining a visual link with that environment. Designers enjoy the opportunity to create new types of spaces in buildings, and developers see atria as prestigious amenities that can increase commercial value and appeal. In a domus , a large house in ancient Roman architecture , the atrium was the open central court with enclosed rooms on all sides. In

264-467: A few columns that, together with those other features, frame vividly coloured architectural views of buildings, columns, landscape, garden scenes, religious statues, beyond, emphasizing expansion and grandeur, but including no humans and only a few birds on the short, window wall. This is also the technique in other unreconstructed rooms. For example, In another bedroom, known as Room M, the frescoes depict columns that appear to expand into another room, giving

308-466: A monastery in the ruins of a villa at Subiaco that had belonged to Nero . Around 590, Saint Eligius was born in a highly placed Gallo-Roman family at the 'villa' of Chaptelat near Limoges , in Aquitaine . The abbey at Stavelot was founded ca 650 on the domain of a former villa near Liège and Vézelay Abbey had a similar founding. As late as 698, Willibrord established Echternach Abbey at

352-527: A vignette in a frescoed wall at the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto 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. Villas were centres of a variety of economic activity such as mining, pottery factories, or horse raising such as those found in northwestern Gaul . Villas specialising in

396-405: Is a comfortable working farm rather than a luxurious estate that others nearby were. Nonetheless, an elegant central courtyard is colonnaded on three sides with columns of red and white stucco. Large quantities of pottery and farm implements were found. Plaster casts of the original entrance doors were made from the hollow spaces left. A plaster cast of a pig found here and killed in the catastrophe

440-470: Is believed that since the tablet with the letters "L. HER. FLO" on it was found inside the villa, it must serve as a mark of villa ownership. These two are the only confirmed owners in the early 1st century BC and 1st century AD, though there may have been earlier owners. The Villa is most notable for its works of art, especially its highly skilled buon fresco paintings, said to be the highest quality Roman frescoes ever found and which are now scattered around

484-474: Is building a virtual model of the Villa, linking the scattered frescoes, based on the notes and plan drawn at the time of excavation by archaeologist Felice Barnabei (1902), photographs taken of the excavation, the research of Phyllis W. Lehmann (1953) and axonometric drawings of the plan, locating the images on the walls, by Maxwell Anderson (1987). The fullest reconstruction from original frescoes at present

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528-401: Is indicated by side- shading with slight, selective cast shadow. Pompeian red in front planes, contrasting with the blue tone of the fainter, further planes, provides an additional effective cue for depth. The room had one, north-facing, outside window, through which pyroclastic flows from Vesuvius appear to have entered. As part of the sophisticated depictive scheme, the dado or lower parts of

572-477: Is of a bedroom ( cubiculum diurnum ), one of the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum since 1903, and since 2007 a feature of the new Roman Gallery. It consists of most of a newly cleaned and reconstructed set of walls entirely painted in highly accomplished fresco. These spacious Roman II Style murals represent their walls as open above socle or dado height, except for the architraves above and

616-744: Is partially based on the fairly numerous ancient Roman written sources and on archaeological remains, though many of these are poorly preserved. The most detailed ancient text on the meaning of "villa" is by Varro (116–27 BC) dating from the end of the Republican period, which is used for most modern considerations. But Roman authors (e.g. Columella [4-70 AD], Cato the Elder [234-149 BC]) wrote in different times, with different objectives and for aristocratic readers and hence had specific interpretations of villa . The Romans built many kinds of villas and any country house with some decorative features in

660-774: The Tomb of Lyson or at Kallikles. At a time when the Roman Republic was ending and classicism somewhat fading, this is considered as an interesting comment on style and taste. Seemingly, Greek representations in the home were considered acceptable, even admired and sophisticated. The images survived the quick succession of Vesuvian cataclysms because of the skill of the fresco work and the absence of organic materials such as indigo , murex purple, red madder among its pigments. The reddening of some of its yellow ochre shows temperatures to have exceeded 300 °C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art , together with King's College, London ,

704-574: 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:

748-536: The interior . Modern atria, as developed in the late 19th and 20th centuries, are often several stories high, with a glazed roof or large windows , and often located immediately beyond a building's main entrance doors (in the lobby ). Atria are a popular design feature because they give their buildings a "feeling of space and light." The atrium has become a key feature of many buildings in recent years. Atria are popular with building users, building designers and building developers. Users like atria because they create

792-556: The villa urbana in Central Italy. 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 , fundus or sometimes, rus . A villa rustica had 2 or 3 parts: Under the Empire, many patrician villas were built on

836-655: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre Museum . The villa was first unearthed by the landowners over several seasons from 1876. In 1894 excavations brought to light a villa rustica covering 1000 m with clearly defined residential sector with baths and a pars rustica with farm buildings and warehouses. The breeding of farmyard animals was practiced and most of the rooms on the ground floor were used for processing and conservation of oil, wine and cereals. The majority of portable belongings seems to have still been in place, though some objects were unlikely to be in

880-592: The Roman style may be called a "villa" by modern scholars. Two kinds of villas were generally described: 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 or at Grottarossa in Rome, and those outside the city walls of Pompeii which demonstrate the antiquity and heritage of

924-419: The Villa included Anemone , Borage , Dianthus , Amaranth , Aster , Sedge , Geranium , Buttercup , Mallow . Pollen samples additionally confirmed the cultivation of grapes at Villa Regina, likely pressed into wine on site. The holes in the ground left by the roots of the Roman vines were found and vines have again been planted in them. Although the villa was of relatively modest size compared to others in

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968-429: The area and had no atrium , pool or sculpture collection, its frescoes were exceptional in their beauty and quality. Evidence in tablets and graffiti shows that the house was probably built around 40-30 BC. The villa was privately discovered, excavated, partially dismantled and reburied in 1900. The villa had three stories, complete with a bath suite and an underground passage to a stable and agricultural buildings,

1012-491: The coasts ( villae maritimae ) such as those on picturesque sites overlooking the Bay of Naples like the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum , or on the isle of Capri , at Circeii and at Antium . Wealthy Romans also escaped the summer heat in the hills within easy reach of Rome , especially around Frascati and including the imperial Hadrian's Villa -palace at Tivoli . Cicero allegedly possessed no fewer than seven villas,

1056-472: 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 . The late Roman Republic witnessed an explosion of villa construction in central Italy (current regions of Toscana, Umbria, Lazio, and Campania), especially in

1100-595: The last owner, Maxima, which is a name written on many of the silver vessels. Some have speculated that the previous owner of the villa was L. Caecilius Lucundus, a banker from Pompeii, who inherited the wealth of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Campania, who was the father of the hypothetical Maxima. In 1895 in the torcularium the magnificent so-called Boscoreale Treasure was found in a chest and consisted of 102 items: silver tableware, bracelets, earrings, rings,

1144-558: The latter not excavated. The central ground floor of the living quarters consisted of over thirty rooms or enclosures surrounding a peristyle . The building featured an impressive main entrance approached by five broad steps leading to a colonnaded forecourt rather than the typical atrium . Ownership of the villa has been contested. While there is no doubt P. Fannius Synistor did reside there, excavated bronze tablets show another name, that of Lucius Herennius Florus. Many things were marked with seals in ancient Rome to indicate possession. It

1188-407: The locations of their intended use: while many chests and wardrobes held stored furnishings, some material may have been brought in for temporary storage, such as two bronze bathtubs decorated with lion heads handles that had no obvious destination in the bathing complex, one of which even being too large to fit through the last door. In a large chest were forty keys and silver tableware; in the kitchen

1232-402: The middle of the atrium was the impluvium , a shallow pool sunken into the floor to catch rainwater from the roof. Some surviving examples are beautifully decorated. The opening in the ceiling above the pool ( compluvium ) called for some means of support for the roof, and it is here where one differentiates between five different styles of atrium. As the centrepiece of the house, the atrium

1276-407: The most luxurious amenities, they were often embellished with extremely luxurious decorations such as frescoes , testifying to the wealth of the owners. Among the most important finds are the exquisite frescoes from the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor and the sumptuous Boscoreale Treasure of the Villa della Pisanella, which is now displayed in several major museums. In Roman times this area, like

1320-520: The oldest of them, which he inherited, near Arpinum in Latium. Pliny the Younger had three or four which are well known from his descriptions. 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. By

1364-535: The seagoing export of olive oil to Roman legions in Germany became a feature of the southern Iberian province of Hispania Baetica . In some cases villas survived the fall of the Empire into the Early Middle Ages ; large working villas were donated by aristocrats and territorial magnates to individual monks, often to become the nucleus of famous monasteries . For example, Saint Benedict established

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1408-579: The sense of a much larger, almost unending, space. The facing long walls (19 ft or 5.8 m) of the Metropolitan cubiculum are mirror images of each other, possibly by transfer, with variations. In addition, each is divided into four panels by painted columns. Distance in these paintings is built up through a series of orthogonal architectural surfaces, and indicated by overlap occlusion , foreshortening , diminution , pronounced aerial perspective , but without consistent vanishing points . Modelling

1452-402: The skeleton of a dog on a chain; in the stable the bones of several tethered horses, one of which had managed to wriggle out and escape. In the olive pressing-room ( torcularium ) the first three human skeletons came to light, including that of a woman, possibly the mistress of the house, who wore splendid gold earrings with topaz jewels, and as the subject of much romanticization has been called

1496-575: The system of fractals used to arrange the panels on the rest of the facades at Federation Square. In Nashville, Tennessee , U.S., the Opryland Hotel hosts 4 different large atria, spanning 9 acres (36,000 m ) of glass ceiling in total, in the hotel above the gardens of: Delta, Cascades, Garden-Conservatories, and Magnolia. When it opened in 2019, the Leeza SOHO in Beijing , had

1540-557: The term "Roman villa" generally covers buildings with the common features of being extra-urban (i.e. located outside urban settlements, unlike the domus which was inside them) and residential, with accommodation for the owner. The definition also changed with time: the earliest examples are mostly humble farmhouses in Italy, while from the Republican period a range of larger building types are included. The present meaning of "villa"

1584-484: The term atrium is not usually used to describe Islamic architecture ). The 19th century brought the industrial revolution with great advances in iron and glass manufacturing techniques. Courtyards could then have horizontal glazing overhead, eliminating some of the weather elements from the space and giving birth to the modern atrium. Fire control is an important aspect of contemporary atrium design due to criticism that poorly designed atria could allow fire to spread to

1628-403: The villas: This rustic villa was discovered more recently, in 1977, buried under 8m of compressed volcanic ash and material from pyroclastic flow , later topped by material from daily activity through the centuries. Unlike the villas plundered and reburied by treasure hunters, Villa Regina was treated as an archaeological discovery and therefore has been preserved in its complete state. The villa

1672-487: The walls are depicted as themselves, but in First Style. Ledges and niches there show near objects: "metal and glass vases on shelves and tables appearing to project out from the wall", playfully belying the common impression that perspective is always for depicting recession from the picture plane. In other parts of the Villa there are brightly coloured non-figurative walls, in First Style, some of which are on display at

1716-408: The water cistern fed by water seeping through the porous bottom of the overlying impluvium. The atrium contributed to the passive cooling of the house. The term was also used for a variety of spaces in public and religious buildings, mostly forms of arcaded courtyards, larger versions of the domestic spaces. Byzantine churches were often entered through such a space (as are many mosques , though

1760-411: The whole of Campania , was agricultural despite its proximity to cities including Pompeii, and specialised in wine and olive oil. Information on, and objects from, the villas can also be seen in the nearby Antiquarium di Boscoreale . Many other Roman villas were discovered in the vicinity, often by "treasure" hunters towards the end of the 19th century after which they were reburied, including notably

1804-495: The world after being auctioned following removal. Most of the figures in the frescoes have characteristics of Greek Hellenism or Classicism . For instance, those found in the living room appear to be depictions of either philosophers, such as Epicurus , Zeno or Menedemus , or possibly old kings, like King Kinyras of Cyprus. Similarly, the bedrooms of the Second Style also evoke Hellenistic qualities, such as are seen at

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1848-513: The years following the dictatorship of Sulla (81 BC). For example the villa at Settefinestre from the 1st century BC was the centre of one of the latifundia involved in large-scale agricultural production in Etruria . 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

1892-562: Was also made. It also includes preserved parts of a wine press. Near the centre of the villa is the wine cellar in which 18 dolia , of total capacity 10,000 litres, were buried for storing the must from the adjoining press. An unusual find was an oil lamp dating from the 3-5th c. AD showing that the place was tunnelled into in the later Roman era. Pollen analysis conducted at Villa Regina identified various species of cultivated plant life. Tree varieties included Birch , Hazelnut , Cypress , Ash , Walnut , Pine and Olive . Flowers at

1936-422: Was the most lavishly furnished room. Wealthier houses often included a marble cartibulum , an oblong marble table supported by trapezophoros pedestals depicting mythological creatures like winged griffins. Also, it contained the little chapel to the ancestral spirits ( lararium ), the household safe ( arca ) and sometimes a bust of the master of the house. The cylindrical puteal (a wellhead) gave access to

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