The newly located facility includes features never before seen at a Roman gladiators' school, or ludus, such as traces of a wooden training dummy. And outside the gates, the researchers discovered what they call the first known gladiators' cemetery on the grounds of a ludus.

The complex "is absolutely huge," said Franz Humer, scientific director of Carnuntum Archaeological Park, where the gladiator school was discovered—and where much of the ancient city has been reconstructed, a la Colonial Williamsburg.

The discovery, near the River Danube, is "one of the most interesting things I can imagine here in my career," Humer added.

The newfound school "is important," added the University of Buffalo's Stephen Dyson, an expert on the history and archaeology of