Themes "Buildings" - Roman Villa

The Roman villa.

Ancient Roman architecture adopted the style of classical Greek architecture and adapted to to their way of life as the Roman style. The Roman style used new materials, particularly Roman concrete, and newer technologies such as the arch and the dome to make buildings that were typically strong and well engineered.

People mainly lived in small villages of wooden houses with thatched roofs, much as they had before the Romans arrived.
Villas were large farms with a big house for the owners. They had lots of servants and farm workers to help run the villa. However, some wealthy Romans lived in villas and palaces. The urban villa (villa urbana) would be similar to a wealthy person's one in the city and would have mosaic floors, frescoes on their walls and private pools. The Empire contained many kinds of villas some of which were small palaces such as those that were situated in the cool hills within easy reach of Rome, others were more like the country houses of England or Poland.