Best Guidebooks / Maps for Umbria?
 

Any rants or raves about guidebooks/maps for this area. I expect I'll end up having to use a combination of them - a few to plan at home and one to take on the trip.

I think the best map is the Touring Club Italiano map of Umbria at a scale of 1:200000. For planning at home, Insight Guide's Umbria is very nice, with beautiful photos but it is too heavy to take with you. Rough Guide's Florence and Umbria is a great guidebook, but because they combine both regions, it too is pretty heavy. I don't think the Eyewitness Guide to Umbria is all that great; too brief and leaves out a lot. The Blue Guide to Umbria is very detailed if you are interested in the art to be found in churches and museums. Touring Club Italiano also has a small guidebook to Umbria that I found useful to take along.

Agree, best maps are TCI. Freytag & Berndt maps are good too. Best guide books are Rough Guides and Cadogan's, both cover the off the beaten track points of interest as well as the major sites...neither are picture books, just full of good useful information.

As far as guidebooks go, I second the nominations for Cadogan and Touring Club Italiano. I don't have their guide to Umbria but find the Sicily one very thorough from the art, architecture etc. point of view; Cadogan has more hotel and restaurant recommendations.

When you get to Umbria, you might want to look for the Condé Nast Traveller Gold guide to Umbria (in Italian). In addition to wonderful photographs and quite detailed information, it is also good on things like restaurants, shopping, etc. Printed on thick glossy paper, it also weighs a ton, unfortunately...

Thanks for your inputs. This gift card is burning a hole in my pocket.