Make This Roman Villa

Part of Usborne’s popular cut-out model series, Make This Roman Villa offers children aged four to eight a fun and interactive history lesson on the grand architecture and lifestyle of the ancient Romans.
        
Designed and illustrated by Iain Ashman, the historically accurate model of a Roman nobleman's villa can be made with only a tube of glue, a ruler and a pair of scissors or a craft knife. The completed model measures 605mm x 458mm (24 x 18in) along the base and includes the main house, courtyard, servants’ quarters, a storehouse, workrooms stables. Decorative details include colonnades, statues, urns, grapevines, trees, wells and pool. There are also more than 20 cut-out figures with which to populate the finished villa.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, they say but, fortunately, this villa can be easily built in under an hour with adult assistance (a little or a lot, depending on the age of your young builder/s).

Building a Slice of Rome

To get started, you have to lay the foundations, which involves taking the book apart, then trimming, folding and gluing the baseboard together. Using the brief, easy-to-follow instructions (and useful diagrams), you then proceed to construct the house. You start with the walls, which are folded and glued together, before attaching the roof (a development that proved exciting for my wide-eyed construction crew). With this complete and the technique honed, the storehouse, servants’ quarters, courtyard and stables quickly take shape.

A word of advice: keep track of all the numbered pieces and have them laid out in order, so you can locate them easily when needed.

The next stage of construction – adding the doorways, stairs, colonnades and other adornments – proved a bit fiddly for smaller hands (and shorter attention spans), but was still accomplished swiftly with some guidance. The final jobs were the trees and human figures, which proved the easiest task, simply requiring one fold and a bit of glue to hold them together. Colours on the bases indicate where the trees go and code numbers for the human figures tell who they are and their job (slaves harvesting olives, slaves returning from hunt, Roman officer and his wife, etc). With all the hard work done, exploration and playtime commenced with gusto.

Rome in 3D – on Your Kitchen Table

The model proved engaging and challenging for its target audience, and we were able to bring this little piece of ancient Rome to 3D life with a minimum of fuss. And we thought the finished product was not bad at all for novice villa builders.

In terms of educational value, the model could be improved with the inclusion of some facts about the building, the function of its various parts and the people who lived in it. As it is, the only information you get is that the model is "the villa of a rich nobleman, situated in the countryside outside Imperial Rome" and that it is "crammed with accurate historical detail".  That it is, but a little historical and cultural background to all that detail would have gone a long way to answering the questions raised by my creative young minds while they were building.