Italian police have revealed the discovery of a hidden cache of ancient marble carvings depicting early gladiators, which they believe art thieves removed from an Italian tomb.

Police and antiquities officials announced the bust and revealed the carvings at Rome's Villa Giulia Museum on Wednesday, hailing the find as both a major archeological discovery and a blow to the market in looted artifacts.

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli arrives for the presentation of ancient Roman marble reliefs depicting gladiators in combat.
(Plinio Lepri/Associated Press)

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli described the find as "exceptional" to Italy's ANSA news agency.

The fact that the tomb raiders and illegal traffickers were unable to sell the pieces "shows how hard it now is to place plundered masterpieces," he said.

Authorities said Italy's special art-theft investigation squad discovered the cache buried in the garden of a private home north of Rome 10 days ago, after having conducted a three-year investigation.

The discovery of the ancient Roman marble reliefs shows how difficult it has become to sell plundered art.
(Plinio Lepri/Associated Press)

Along with the panels, the police also found the lower portion of a marble statue of a man in a toga and a piece of a column. They suspect that all the segments came from one tomb, with the gladiator panels believed to be part of the relief decorating a rectangular tomb.

Police have yet to find the burial site.

Rare early depictions

Dating back to the late 1st century BC, the Carrara marble panels depict early gladiator fights, when the combatants were often bare-chested or bearing only basic armour, swords and shields. The fighters are shown duelling, while surrounded by the trumpet and horn players who provided musical accompaniment to the bloody battles.

"The attention to detail is incredible," Anna Maria Moretti, the superintendent for antiquities for the area north of Rome, said Wednesday.

According to Moretti, these early depictions — and the high quality of the panels police discovered in the cache — are rare since artists more commonly depicted later gladiators, when the fighters wore more elaborate armour and used a much wider array of weapons.

Officials said the panels will be restored before being displayed to the public at Villa Giulia.

Aggressive campaign to recover antiquities

In recent years, Italy has undertaken an aggressive domestic and international campaign to recover looted antiquities both inside and outside of its borders.

Italian art cops have recovered several major artifacts in recent months, ANSA said, including a marble head depicting Dionysus and artifacts from Etruscan and Roman tombs.

U.S. museums that had looted artifacts in their collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, have made deals with the Italians to return many pieces in exchange for new loans of other art works.

Also, former Getty curator Marion True is on trial in Rome, along with art dealer Robert Hecht, on charges of dealing in looted antiquities.

With files from the Associated Press.