A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house in the territory of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Nevertheless, 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. Source: Wikipedia (en)