November - 2013

Dianne Bennett ’75 co-authors a new e-book that lures travelers off Rome’s beaten trails

Bennett.

Dianne Bennett and her husband, William Graebner, taking in the beautiful Italian landscape.

Off the beaten track.  Alternative.  Rome with the Romans.  All these descriptions apply to Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler, a new e-book in the Curious Traveler Series by acclaimed travel writers Dianne Bennett and William Graebner.  Modern Rome features more than 100 hyperlinks, 63 photos, and 4 detailed maps.  Pack your bags.  Bring your curiosity.

Following the success of their alternative guidebook, Rome the Second Time: 15 Itineraries that Don’t Go to the Coliseum, Bennett and Graebner offer four new Rome walks, all outside the city’s tourist core, all easily accessible by Metro or tram, and all in neighborhoods where Romans live and work. 

“Garbatella—Garden City Suburb” is a guided tour through one of the world’s most engaging and mysterious planned communities, a 1920s creation featuring curving streets, enchanting stairways, interior courtyards, and some of the most unusual public housing ever built.

“EUR: Mid-Century Spectacle” features a dramatic locale, now a center of Rome’s business community, but planned and constructed in monumental style to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1922 Fascist March on Rome.

On the opposite end of the city, a walk through Flaminio introduces Rome’s sensational 21st-century, Starchitect-designed cultural centers, and across the Tiber, the suggestive site of the 1960 Olympic Games, the Foro Italico, a virtual  “Mussolini theme park” built by the Duce in the 1930s.

A fourth, stairways walk begins in Trastevere’s back yard, winding up, down, and around Rome’s 8th hill, the Gianicolo, traversing a 17th-century villa, a compelling 1941 monument to the Italian unification movement, and one of the smallest, and most charming temples in all of Italy.

Dianne Bennett is a tax attorney and the former managing partner of Buffalo’s largest law firm, Hodgson Russ.  William Graebner is a widely published author of books on American history, including Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America.  They live in Buffalo, Los Angeles, and Rome, where they get around on a Malaguti 250, a large scooter.