Different travelers have varying goals and budgets, and selecting a guide book will depend on the individual or family that is traveling. There are general guides, regional ones, and specialized books. They can be heavy, so travelers will probably want to limit themselves to two. Writers and editors may change from year to year, so it is worthwhile to read reviews of a current edition on a website like Amazon.com before making a purchase. It also makes sense to research hotel and other recommendations from a book just a bit further by using a review website as a supplement, such as TripAdvisor.
Guides for Budget Travel
Two of the leading guidebooks for budget travelers around the globe are The Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. Both series publish good guides to Italy that cover the entire country and are packed with practical information. Lonely Planet covers more small towns and has better city maps, and it is the best organized book as far as information about getting from place to place by public transportation. The Rough Guide is more enjoyable to read, and over the years the series has improved the quality of its maps.
Let’s Go Italy has long been a favorite of younger budget travelers and known for its sense of humor, but like the rest of the series it is a useful resource for people of all ages. The Rough Guide and Lonely Planet include listings for hostels, campgrounds, and other low budget accommodations and dining options but also include moderate and luxury accommodations and restaurants as well, while Let’s Go is focused on mostly budget options.
Comprehensive Guides
The biggest names in travel guides make good books on Italy. Fodor’s has improved the quality of its maps and its paper in recent years and has expanded the size of the books and coverage, and the Italy guide is particularly good and now comes in color with a fold out map. It has great itinerary suggestions based on the number of days of travel and "bests" lists that help tourists narrow down places they might like to visit.
Frommer’s is also now in color and retains its long term commitment to price consciousness partnered with quality. Frommer’s maintains an excellent website with interactive travel forums, including unbiased personal reviews of places recommended in the books.
Rick Steves’ Italy is one of the most fun to read, and it is beloved by fans of his PBS television program. The guide is filled with wise tips, but although it covers the entire country it needs to be supplemented with another book if there will be travel outside of the main sites. The strength of Rick Steves’ guides is that they cover the places they mention in depth, for example they have excellent suggested “tours” of major museums and churches. However, they are skimpy on side trips and small towns. The maps are lacking in detail and can be frustrating since they are sometimes not quite to scale.
Regional Guides
For travelers visiting just one Italian province or region, it is recommended to purchase a regional guidebook rather than one that covers the entire country. Cadogan Guides makes an excellent series of books covering different Italian regions. For example, they make one of only two English language guides covering the province of Emilia-Romagna (and its principal city, Bologna).
There are numerous guides to Tuscany and also a good selection of regional books covering other popular destinations such as Umbria and the Amalfi Coast. Lonely Planet makes a series of regional guides, but they are little more than reprints of the pages for those regions covered by their Italy book.
City Guides
Time Out makes some of the best city guide books out there. The series is in depth, well written with a sense of humor, and structured in a useful way. Their maps are particularly useful since they often have a street index, a rare find in a guide book and really practical for anyone who needs to find specific places. Time Out makes a couple of Rome books, and ones for Florence (with Tuscany highlights), Milan, Turin (though outdated from 2005), Naples (including the Amalfi Coast), and Venice (and the Veneto),
Many of the series mentioned above also make city guides, which also cover day trips from those cities to surrounding areas.
Specialty Guides
For Italy there are many specialty guides that are particularly good for art and architecture. The DK Eyewitness Travel series has several books for Italy, and they are in full color on glossy paper. The series is heavy on photos and descriptions of places, but light on practical information and are definitely best supplemented with a more comprehensive guide. Blue Guide Rome and Blue Guide Florence are indispensable for lovers of art and history. They are terrific museum companions and give more background information about specific works of art than any other guide and make for interesting reading without even traveling.
Recommended specialized books for pilgrims and other travelers interested in Catholicism include The Guide to Lodging in Italy’s Monasteries, On the Road with Francis of Assisi,and The Pilgrim’s Italy: A Travel Guide to the Saints. There are also a fair number of books on Italy that feature food and shopping, though all the comprehensive guides cover these topics to some degree.
With so many options to choose from, it’s worth a trip to a neighborhood book store, or ideally a specialty travel bookstore, to take some time to browse the shelves and select the books that seem most appropriate for a particular trip. Consider whether a comprehensive country guide is needed or if a city or regional guide would be better, and some travelers might like to supplement their main guide with a specialty one.
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Annabella Gualdoni - Annabella Gualdoni is a lawyer by education but works an educator and real estate professional. She has bought, sold, and renovated ...
