Modern consensus of the Seven Wonders of Ancient Rome is as follows:

Circus Maximus

Trajan’s Forum

Aqueducts

Caracalla’s Bath

Roman roads

Pantheon

Colosseum

However, I’m going to ask the readers of this blog what their top Three Wonders of Ancient Rome are. The Seven Wonders of Ancient Rome tend to be places, but you can make your top three wonders as things, places and even people if you want!

Here is my top three:

The first thing that comes to mind is Ancient Roman glass. Considering the limited technology and knowledge of the science behind glassmaking, the Ancient Romans made astonishingly complex and beautiful works in glass. If you look at the Lycurgus Cup (picture below), it actually changes color when lit! It’s hard to find other cultures doing this type of advanced glassmaking, and the Ancient Romans were really the only ones to have mastered it for their time.

The second wonder of Ancient Rome that comes to mind is Ruins of Pompei. While it is a tragedy that people died as a result of a volcanic eruption, it’s not often that an entire city could be preserved so well. Thanks to the preservation, we now know much about the culture of Ancient Rome. Nobody is willing to admit it, but the brothels of Pompei and the mural paintings that were discovered in the brothels have taught us that the Ancient Romans were perhaps more liberal when it came to sexual matters.

The next wonder of Ancient Rome is Latin. I know, I know, it’s really cliché, but it’s true, Latin was and is to some degree still important. Without the invention of Latin, we may never have had any Romance languages like French, Italian, Spanish and many languages. Latin is still one of the few ancient languages that are studied today. How many public schools offer courses in Egyptian hierglypics? I’m guessing not as many as schools offering Latin. The fact that Latin is still taught in schools is a testament to the virtues of Latin literature, law, culture, language etc.

So, what are your top three wonders of Ancient Rome?