The villa holds a central place in the history of Western architecture. 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. 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. After the Renaissance, the villa appears beyond an Italian context as an architectural form revived and re-imagined throughout Western Europe and in other parts of the world influenced by European culture.

In America, charmingly asymmetrical Italian villas were built from the 1800’s thru today, patterned after Italy's rambling ancient multi-generational country estates. These new-but-seemingly-old designs lent an aura of stability, dignity, tradition, and environmental consciousness to the suburban or rural homes of America's Industrial-Age nouveau riche. The Italian villas typically had extensive park-like naturalistically-landscaped grounds, a floor plan convenient to a life involving entertainment and service of staff. These homes were characterized by a liberal use of brackets, bays, cornices (often arched), and in many cases a tower.