> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://theromanfiles.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Villa of Cicero: Reburied in the 18th Century, Mapped by a Geophysical Survey - URL: https://theromanfiles.com/villa-of-cicero-pompeii-geophysical-survey/ - Published: 2026-10-18T11:58:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-18T11:58:41.000Z - Description: A 2026 geophysical survey at Pompeii's buried suburban villa finds that many walls appear to lie just half a metre below the surface — far better preserved than the research team had assumed. - Author: J E Cowie - Tags: News In the Parco Archeologico di Pompei, beyond the city walls, there is a green hill covered in vineyards and fruit trees. It looks like farmland. It is, in fact, the site of a Roman villa that was excavated from 1748, stripped of its paintings and mosaics, and buried again in the late 1770s. The villa has been, in the words of the team that has now surveyed it, "somewhat largely forgotten." Its name — the Villa of Cicero — is, as Il Gazzettino Vesuviano notes, not supported by evidence linking it to the Roman orator. But the paintings it yielded are among the most celebrated Roman wall paintings ever found, and they are now housed in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. The gap in the record is the point. The Bourbon excavators who opened the villa kept diaries and drew a plan, but they were digging for paintings, mosaics and sculpture, not for the archaeology around them. They took what they wanted, reburied the rest, and moved on. ![Map showing where Pompeii is](https://theromanfiles.com/content/images/2026/10/map_pompeii.jpg) Pompeii, Pompei, Italy ## What the survey found In June 2026, a team led by Ivo van der Graaff of the University of New Hampshire and John R. Clarke of the University of Texas at Austin completed the first phase of a non-invasive geophysical survey of the site. The geophysical work, conducted by Geostudi Astier, combined ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography and magnetometry, and the project also carried out a LiDAR survey of the surface. The preliminary results, published in the Parco Archeologico di Pompei's E-Journal degli Scavi di Pompei, are cautious by design: the authors note that the findings "continue to be elaborated and may change." What they show, so far, is that the buried remains are preserved considerably better than the team had expected. Dense rectilinear anomalies in the ground-penetrating radar data at depths of 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 metres reproduce the orthogonal wall arrangement recorded in Francesco La Vega's 1778 survey plan. Many walls appear to lie only 0.5 metres below the modern surface. The team's reading is that substantial portions of the villa remain standing in situ. The surface associated with the A.D. 79 eruption, they suggest, lies approximately 2.0 to 3.0 metres below the present ground level. In the southeastern sector, the data broadly match the rooms and portico on La Vega's plan. In the northwestern sector, the anomalies are weaker and more diffuse, consistent with gardens, open courtyards, and colonnaded walkways rather than dense architecture. A circular anomaly in one space may indicate a fountain. Perhaps most significantly, on the western side of the plateau, the electrical resistivity data show a series of rectilinear patterns whose pattern, the authors write, "strongly suggests the presence of additional structures that remain largely undisturbed" — possibly, they note, another villa situated between the Villas of Cicero and Diomedes. ## The Bourbon record Digging at the villa started in 1748–49 and soon stopped: pockets of toxic volcanic gas, known as mofetta, endangered the workers. Francesco La Vega restarted the work in 1763, and it went on, with interruptions, until 1778–79\. Like other Bourbon digs, it was a hunt for paintings, mosaics and sculpture rather than an effort to preserve the archaeological context. When the best pieces had gone, the villa was filled in again and the land handed back to its owners. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who visited the site, praised the dancing figures recovered from the villa as "fluid as thought and beautiful as though executed by the Graces." Reproduced as engravings, the villa's maenads, satyrs, centaurs, cupids and dancers were among the first Roman paintings seen widely across Europe, and motifs taken from them spread to ceramics, furniture, wallpaper and porcelain, becoming, in the authors' words, "central to the visual language of Neoclassicism." What the Bourbon excavators left behind is a documentary record that is, by the standards of the time, exceptional: diaries, a survey plan, and the engravings published in Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte. But it is also incomplete. Because the digging was selective and kept no detailed record of the layers it cut through, the authors write, it is hard to work out how the villa was built up over time, or where many of the objects removed from it originally belonged. ## "A mystery that concerns almost the whole ancient city" Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Parco Archeologico di Pompei, framed the project in terms of the broader problem of the Bourbon record. In a statement reported by ANSA, he described the villa as the only remaining opportunity to understand the Bourbon excavation method in full, by comparing the period documentation with what was left on site. He called it a unique archaeological reserve, and said that understanding the Villa of Cicero means resolving a mystery that concerns almost the entire ancient city of Pompeii: traces of the earliest explorations are found almost everywhere, but almost never with historical documentation to clarify what exactly happened and when. Here, he said, the documentation is relatively detailed. As reported by Il Gazzettino Vesuviano, Zuchtriegel added that there is still much to investigate and understand, and that the possible next steps remain to be evaluated with the delicate balance between excavation and protection of Pompeii's heritage in mind. ## What comes next The team has identified three areas of particular significance for future investigation: the central residential core, where a dense concentration of rectilinear anomalies indicates substantial surviving architecture; the southeastern wing, where a large block of orthogonal anomalies suggests an extensive architectural complex; and a long, continuous linear anomaly along the southern and southeastern margins, which may be the villa's perimeter wall, a terrace retaining structure, or a boundary associated with an adjacent roadway. The project also lays the groundwork for a digital reconstruction of the villa and its decorative programmes — restoring the paintings and mosaics to their original architectural settings in virtual and augmented reality, rather than leaving them as isolated objects in a museum. And the 18th-century backfill brought in to cover the site after excavation offers, the authors note, a rare opportunity to study early excavation and collection practices through modern techniques. The results are preliminary. The authors are explicit about that. But the file that was closed in the 1770s, with a survey plan and a set of engravings and a green hill over the buried villa, is open again. ## Sources ANSA (2026) 'Villa di Cicerone a Pompei, nuove tecnologie per capire gli scavi del '700', ANSA, 17 October 2026, available at: [https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/arte/2026/10/17/villa-di-cicerone-a-pompei-nuove-tecnologie-per-capire-gli-scavi-del\_806012f2-9bcc-4681-821b-9aa65945af27.html](https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/arte/2026/10/17/villa-di-cicerone-a-pompei-nuove-tecnologie-per-capire-gli-scavi-del%5F806012f2-9bcc-4681-821b-9aa65945af27.html?ref=theromanfiles.com) (Accessed: 18 October 2026). IGV News (2026) 'Pompei, la villa di Cicerone svela nuovi segreti: la geofisica esplora il sottosuolo', Il Gazzettino Vesuviano, 18 October 2026, available at: [https://www.ilgazzettinovesuviano.com/2026/10/18/pompei-la-villa-di-cicerone-svela-nuovi-segreti-la-geofisica-esplora-il-sottosuolo/](https://www.ilgazzettinovesuviano.com/2026/10/18/pompei-la-villa-di-cicerone-svela-nuovi-segreti-la-geofisica-esplora-il-sottosuolo/?ref=theromanfiles.com) (Accessed: 18 October 2026). Van der Graaff, I., Thomas, M.L., Morelli, G., Clarke, J.R., Warden, P.G., Schofield, Z., Muntasser, N.K., Di Maio, G. and Bowling, H. (2026) 'Preliminary Results of an Integrated Geophysical Survey at the Villa of Cicero', E-Journal degli Scavi di Pompei, Parco Archeologico di Pompei, issue dated 19 October 2026, available at: [https://pompeiisites.org/wp-content/uploads/E-Journal\_10\_2026.pdf](https://pompeiisites.org/wp-content/uploads/E-Journal%5F10%5F2026.pdf?ref=theromanfiles.com) (Accessed: 18 October 2026). ## Picture credits - Top picture: The Forum at Pompeii. The Villa of Cicero lies outside the city walls and, reburied in the 18th century, cannot be seen today. Image: Pompeii Forum colonnade: ell brown, [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=theromanfiles.com), via Flickr ([source](https://www.flickr.com/photos/39415781@N06/7652101492?ref=theromanfiles.com)) - Map: drawn from [Natural Earth](https://www.naturalearthdata.com/?ref=theromanfiles.com) (public domain) and [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43332?ref=theromanfiles.com).