A Training Center For Roman Gladiators Was Discover In Austria [Photos]
The site of a training center for Roman gladiators was unearthed in Austria, according to Discovery News.
Archeologists said the site had all of the necessary amenities to prepare men for the arena.
Remains at the school, located in Carnuntum, near Vienna, have been surveyed for more than 100 years. The civil spaces such as the amphitheater and stronghold of the military town had been previously uncovered but the training facility and other remains were only recently excavated.
The school, or ludus, covers 30,138 square feet adn was built in the second centruy A.D., Wolfgang Neubauer of the University of Vienna told Live Science.
A 62-foot tall, free-standing structure inside the courtyard is what is believed to be the space for the gladiators.
There was also something that was certainly some type of post in the arena.
"This might be the foundation of the palus, a wooden pole used for exercising blows with the sword and body slams with the shield," Neubauer and colleagues wrote in a journal about the find.
The building also included barracks or cells where the gladiators would have stayed. Similar ones would have been present at the arena and used to detain them until they fought.
An outline of the gladiator school was visible by noninvasive techniques including aerial photography, ground-penetrating radar and magnetometer surveys.
Live Science was the first to report the story. Here is a YouTube video showing a 3D rendition of the school.