My tastes are European, so it was going to be a Mediterranean villa or a castle.

In Los Angeles, it could easily have been a cheesy Mediterranean villa.

The 392-room hotel is vaguely like the biggest Mediterranean villa you've ever seen, except bigger.

She was at her Mediterranean villa, lounging on a sunbed at the side of a kidney-shaped pool.

Beyond the river were green fields and white Mediterranean villas, walled complexes with the squat classical look to them, some quite large.

Here she was, she mused, lounging in a Mediterranean villa with anything she could ask for within her reach.

It looked like a Mediterranean villa.

While some new houses fit that description, many others imitate the white stucco and sprawling style of Mediterranean villas.

And along the banks are clusters of make-believe Mediterranean villas that give new meaning to the word faux.

A 9,000-square-foot Mediterranean villa, lately a four-family house, sold for $289,000 last year in foreclosure and has been renovated.