 In Pompeii, a large villa excavated in the mid 18th century just outside the Herculaneum Gate was widely believed to have been Cicero's, who was known to have owned a holiday villa in Pompeii he called his "Pompeianum".The villa was stripped of its fine frescoes and mosaics and then re-buried after 1763 – it has yet to be re-excavated.However, contemporaneous descriptions of the building from the excavators combined with Cicero's own references to his "Pompeianum" differ, making it unlikely that it is Cicero's villa.