Inside Villa Basilica, which has origins dating to the Roman period, the Palazzo Comunale, the Palazzo Biscotti, the Palazzo Pievanale, the Museo di Arte Sacra and the church of Santa Maria Assunta can be admired. This town is in the province of Lucca at 330 m asl of altitude and has a population of about 1700 inhabitants.

Originally, Villa Basilica, which was mentioned in an ancient document dating to 774 A.D., belonged to the archbishopric of Lucca until 1196, when the emperor Henry IV (also known as Arrigo IV) put it within his direct jurisdiction.
The town was handed back to Lucca in 1024 (?) and it was annexed to the vicariate of "Terrarum Civium et Vallis Lime", an administrative unit with an extraordinary territorial extension that included 26 towns.
In the XIV century, the vicariate was divided into two parts and Villa Basilica became the chief town of the new detachment. Thus, it experienced an epoch characterized by disputes and incursions by the Lucca's rival cities.
In 1429, it was occupied by Niccolò Fortebraccio's troops, paid by the Florentines.
In 1437, Lucca collected its energies to take the town away from its enemies thanks to Francesco Sforza's army. Villa Basilica entered the modern era under the aegis of Lucca and lived a period of political stability that lasted until the XIX century.
At the end of the XIX century, after the period of the Risorgimento during which the town was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, Villa Basilica went through more than one territorial change.
From 1883, when Vellano (in the province of Pistoia) absorbed the territories of Stiappa and Pontito, to 1890 Villa Basilica reached its current dimensions, first with the loss of some hamlets and then with the acquisition of San Quirico, Medicina, Fibbiana and Aranco.
The participation of Villa Basilica's inhabitants to the fight against the Nazi-Fascist occupation was noteworthy. In 1944, a group of Partisans coming from the town sneaked into the Dutch organization called "Todt" that controlled the Gothic Line and that performed numerous pillage operations in the area of Pizzorne. Villa Basilica was freed in April that year.