Yvonne Elet’s book, Urban Landscape in the Third Rome: Raphael’s Villa and Mussolini’s Forum (Edifir-Edizioni Firenze, 2023), was awarded a major prize. The Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) honors the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of landscape architecture or garden design. The SAH award was named for the late Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, VC ’46, who was instrumental in developing the field of study.

Yvonne's book explores the twentieth-century recreation of the “Renaissance” gardens of Villa Madama, planned by Raphael, and “details how the restored villa came to be integrated into one of the most significant urban initiatives of the Fascist ventennio—the neighboring Foro Mussolini (current Foro Italico)—and linked with the seat of the Foreign Ministry in a verdant garden park. This novel account of the synergy among these coeval projects traces the interwar development of this symbolic entry zone to Rome, demonstrating the power of urban landscape for constructing political and cultural identity. … The richly textured narrative yields a new portrait of the villa as an international salon for soft diplomacy, and examines the mythologizing of Renaissance heritage by ideologues and propagandists establishing the Third Rome.”

The award is felicitous given the recent focus on the Vassar Arboretum and Yvonne’s role as faculty co-chair of the Arboretum Committee, as well as her important work on the history of Vassar’s landscape. Urban Landscape in the Third Rome also received the David R. Coffin Publication Grant from the University of Virginia Center for Cultural Landscapes in 2023.

Vassar’s Committee on Research, which offers internal funding for faculty research and creative projects, provided partial support for the publication of this book.