THIS JUST IN

Honors for St. Paul Hotel The St. Paul Hotel, on Rice Park in downtown St. Paul, was named one of the top 500 hotels in the world in Travel + Leisure magazine's January issue. The Italianate beauty is new to the annual list, which is a product of a reader survey. Repeat performers include classics such as Halekulani in Honolulu; Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tenn., and Raffles Hotel in Singapore. According to the magazine, the hotel gets high marks for "service, including the city's only full-time concierge."

KERRI WESTENBERG

ON DISPLAY: ROME

Catwalk tour of ancient villas The restored ruins of two opulent Roman villas and private thermal baths have opened to the public, equipped with a 3-D reconstruction that offers a virtual tour of the luxurious residences found in downtown Rome. A 2,000-square-yard complex, dating from the 2nd to 4th centuries, features well-preserved mosaic and marble floors, bathtubs and collapsed walls that archaeologists believe belong to a domus -- the richly decorated residences of Rome's wealthy and noble families. Visitors will be able to walk on glass catwalks above the villas' underground remains, immersed in semidarkness just a few feet from the modern city.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

UPDATE: S.D. MEMORIAL

Banking on Crazy Horse A South Dakota billionaire banker has pledged a $5 million matching grant to the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, the largest ever in the mountain carving's nearly 60-year history. T. Denny Sanford of Sioux Falls, a longtime supporter of the project that honors American Indians, allowed his name to be released if it would help the fundraising, said Ruth Ziolkowski, president and CEO. Her husband, the late Korczak Ziolkowski, started the project in 1948 and she has led the project since his death in 1982. Sanford is No. 17 in Business Week magazine's latest annual list of "most generous givers."

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BOOK BRIEFS

Landscapes of the artists Three new travel books offer perspectives on destinations and their connections to theater and literature. "New York Theater Walks: Seven Historical Tours from Times Square to Greenwich Village and Beyond" (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, $16.95) by Howard Kissel also includes a culinary tour of Times Square restaurants. "Ireland: A Traveler's Literary Companion" (Whereabouts Press, $14.95, due out in January), edited by James McElroy, offers excerpts from James Joyce's "Ulysses" and works by other Irish writers. The selections are designed to evoke the landscape, history and charm of Ireland. "Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains" (University of North Carolina Press, $18.95) was written by Georgann Eubanks. The book offers 18 half-day and one-day itineraries, including maps, driving directions and information about places such as the Nu-Wray Inn in Burnsville, where both Mark Twain and Elvis Presley are alleged to have stayed. Other sites mentioned in the book include the William Bartram Trail, which was followed by the protagonist of Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain" (www.nc literarytrails).org.

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OPENING: FORGOTTEN TOWN

Georgia slave town archives One of the nation's oldest black communities where slaves and their descendants have lived for two centuries is writing its own history books. The long-forgotten community of Flat Rock -- which was removed from state maps 150 years ago -- has opened an archives center in a 100-year-old frame house in south DeKalb County. The contents of the center are almost entirely church and family records gathered by two community activists who have worked for three decades to chronicle Flat Rock's history. The community was never incorporated but appeared in various locations on state maps around the time of the Civil War. After the war, the community continued but was wiped from the state's official record -- it doesn't even appear in the official history of DeKalb County published in 1997. The Flat Rock archives are linked to a nearby slave graveyard with about 250 graves, the ancestors of many blacks who still live nearby.

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