villeggiatura /vil-lə-djə-TYəR-ə/. noun. A country residence; a rural retreat suitable for a holiday; a holiday spent in such a place. From Italian villeggiare (to reside in a country villa). Reader J. writes of the word that “as a country-born person who’s spent much of his life in cities, it cracked a kind of nostalgia nut in me—the idea of ‘going back to the village’ is where it took me.”
“Thus in consequence of her mother’s heroic proceedings, and of her brother’s absence on this villegiature, Mrs Verloc found herself oftener than usual all alone not only in the shop, but in the house.” (Joseph Conrad)
“I don’t wonder that she hates the country; I dare to say her child does not owe its existence to the Villeggiatura.” (Horace Walpole)
“Strolling the Hundred Fountains on a hot Roman afternoon, shaded by centuries-old trees and soothed by the gurgle and splash of water, one comes to understand the exalted place of villeggiatura in the Italian soul.” (Thomas Campanella)
“Add to this a multitude of green shutters and striped awnings, and a mass of Virginia creepers and wisterias, and fling over it the lavish light of the American summer, and you have a notion of some of the conditions of our villeggiatura.” (Henry James)
“We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“As Canaletto showed the outer view of the splendid city, so Pietro Longhi revealed the life within the walls by applying genre painting to the middle class. The lady at breakfast en négligé, the abbé tutoring her son, her little girl fondling a toy dog, the tailor coming to display a frock, the dancing master putting the lady through the steps of a minuet, the children wide-eyed at a menagerie, the young women frolicking at blindman’s buff, the tradesmen in their shops, the maskers at Carnival, the theaters, the coffeehouses, the literary coteries, the poets reciting their verses, the quack doctors, the fortunetellers, the vendors of sausages and plums, the promenade in the piazza, the hunting party, the fishing party, the family on its villeggiatura holiday…” (Will Durant)
“One of the major stimuli to the development of Cinquecento Roman villas was villeggiatura—an inheritance from ancient imperial times and still a practice in Rome today—the custom of going to the country for the punishingly hot days of summer.” (Norman Newton)
Elsewhere: Wordnik.