The form and organization of villa architecture depend upon literary descriptions provided by the authors of ancient Rome.

In place of a fixed image is an architectural environment that embodies an ideal of living, or villeggiatura. Rather than embodying a concrete form, the term villa exhibits mobility as the application of an idea to architecture. The villa is therefore most aptly understood as a label or identity capturing several distinct parts, sometimes interrelated or dependent on one another and in other cases divorced from a larger architectural complex. Included in the architecture of a villa may be working structures devoted to farming, referred to as villa rustica, as well as living quarters, or villa urbana. The term villa designates several types of structure that share a natural setting or agrarian purpose. After the Renaissance, the villa appears beyond an Italian context as an architectural form revived and reimagined throughout western Europe and in other parts of the world influenced by European culture. While the form of these structures changed over time, and their location moved to suburban or even urban houses in garden settings, the core design tenet remained an architectural expression of an idyllic setting for learned pursuits and spiritual withdrawal into a domestic retreat from the city. On the Italian peninsula in antiquity, and again during the Renaissance, the idea of a house built away from the city in a natural setting captured the imagination of wealthy patrons and architects. The villa holds a central place in the history of Western architecture.

Robbin's villa