Pliny the Younger, a famous Roman man of letters, was also a serial purchaser of villas. His collection included a coastal home, a property in the Tuscan hills and two villas on Lake Como – one high above the water, named Tragedy, and the other on the lakeside, called Comedy. Villas for Pliny represented otium, a Latin term meaning purposeful and peaceful leisure, a calm rural respite from the often brutal business and political life of Rome circa AD100.
In books, films and glossy television series, villas often enjoy a pivotal role: summertime oases where friends gather, relationships are made, people grow up and perhaps fall in love. Think of the French Riviera villa that is home to the wealthy, creative characters in F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night – based on the real-life Villa America in Cap d’Antibes owned by American art connoisseurs Sara and Gerald Murphy, whose guests included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter. More recently, a gorgeous Italian villa starred alongside Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, while a scene-stealing Croatian mountaintop villa featured in the TV adaptation of The Day of the Jackal, with Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.