Italy! A good basic guidebook as a place to start?
 

We've decided to do Italy in June 2006. Now the fun begins. What guidebook can you recommend that would give us some good basic info on the regions and what each is like? This will probably be the first of many trips that we will take to Italy. Thanks for your help.
-Bill

Like recommending a shirt for you to buy, it seems much more likely that you would want to go to the store (or library) and take a look for yourself.

But here are several good choices:

Fodors (of course)
Frommers
Dorking Kindersley Eyewitness Guides

But your first book might not be the book you use most to plan. I recommend concentrating on the biggest book with the most, big, coloful photographs to inspire you, whet your appetite(s), help you construct your "top ten list" of things/places/experiences that you just can't wait until you get there for...

Take notes from the big picture books - - then use the internet and a good general purpose guide book to actually plan.

Best wishes,

Rex

Thanks for the advice Rex. Kind of what I was planning on doing. Starting large and narrowing things down over time. Thanks!
-Bill

Eyewitness Guide for planning purposes, as well as Michelin Green Guides, which I'd bring on the trip.

We find the Michelin Green Guides are a good place to start. They have the most detailed discussion of history, geography, culture, museums, architecture, natural sights, things to see and do, etc. We use this type of guide to help us decide where we want to go and what we want to do. Then we go to the DK Eyewitness guides and on line resources to help with the practicalities like transportation, hotels, etc.

I like to look at a variety of guidebooks for different reasons. I usually prefer the Michelin green guides and the Cadogan guides. You can get a guide for each regiona (or sometimes for an area covering a few regions) that you will visit.

I always start with the library. I take out pretty much everything they have on the topic (so long as it's not TOO old), and start reading. Then I head to the bookstore and take a look at the choices-- there are a ton out now, catered to all ages and lifestyles. I have really enjoyed the footprint guides (out of Britain)-- have lots of notes on short walks, which I like!
Enjoy!

we atrated with The Rough Guide to Italy to read about regions. In the end, since it was our first trip, we spent a week in Rome, one in Tuscany and another in Venice. Enjoy.

Hi iamq,

My first choice for guidebooks is Rick Steves. They are easy to read, organized, give sample walking tours and beak down the travel experience into digestable portions. I've followed his suggesstions for hotels, restaurants, etc. and have been satisfied.

His videos offer an easy introduction to cities that allow the travelers to obtain a taste of what they are about to experience. They're also fun to watch when you return so you can relive the memories.

The Michelin Green Guides and the Eyewitness guides are very good for expanding on information about the attractions.

==Mike

Another vote for the Eyewitness Guides. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and the pictures are likely to show you things you'll know you want to see. They also are good to take with you for their detailed walking or driving tours and full explanations of things like museums.

I always used Fodors and Frommers mainly for hotel and basic planning, but since my discovery of this site, I've forgotten about them. My questions about hotels are much better answered here. And just doing a search for hotel information here will tell you tons more than you'll find in any guidebook.

Since the "Time Out" guides haven't been mentioned, I might as well put a word in for them. I usually find them pretty indispensable.

Yippee! Thanks to you all for the great suggestions! I'll see you on this board in a few months when I start having details to work out.
-Bill

Another vote for Rick Steves, esp. for Italy.

Not only guidebooks, but check out videos too. Go to the library or local video store and check out Rick Steeve's and anyone else's vacation videos of Italy. It adds that extra dimension to your research.

Also A good phrase book for travelers is Barron's "Italian At A Glance". It covers 1500 expressions and phrases needed by travelers, as well as a bilingual dictionary of approximately 2000 words. great little book includes maps. I also love the Lonley Planet World Food Italy you can get them at amazon.com

If writing style embellished with lots of historical trivia is important to you in a guidebook, the Cadogan series wins, hands down. I happen to be going through guidebooks on Rome at the moment. Here's Rick Steves' intro to the Spanish Steps:

"The Piazza de Spagna, with the very popular Spanish Steps, is named for the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican, which has been here for 300 years. It's been the hangout of many Romantics over the years (Keats, Wagner, Openshaw, Goethe, and others.) The British poet John Keats pondered his mortality, then died in the pink building on the right side of the steps."

And here's Cadogan:
"Even the most experienced old Rome hand envies every visitor's virgin sighting of the Piazza di Spagna, with charms enough to disarm the most chaste Baroqueophobe. For a pretty square is like a melody, and what could be more lyrical than the ochre, pink, salmon and russets of the 18th-century palaces along its butterfly-winged confines, crossed by the languid silhouettes of slender palms. Then these part like a curtain to reveal the rippling Rococo theatrics of the Scalinata di Trinita di Monti, better known in English as the Spanish Steps, which must niggle the French, since they paid Francesco De Sanctis to build them in 1725."

Okay, it's a little over the top, but I find it lots of fun to read. Cadogan goes on from there with many more historical tidbits about the area, and on the next page actually gives you Byron's poetic obituary to Keats.

Maybe you just want the basic facts in a guidebook, or maybe pretty pictures are important to you. In that case, Cadogan is not for you. But you'll get a lot more depth of knowledge about a place, along with very entertaining commentary, touring with a Cadogan book in hand.

That's so funny, nonnafelice. I'm glad I didn't read the Cadogan guide before seeing the Spanish Steps. I'm afraid I would have been horribly disappointed when I actually saw them! But it does sound like fun reading.

I just got back from Rome and used DK and Rough Guides. DK is like USA Today. Lots of pictures and descriptions that leave you wanting for more. The maps in the back are very good, as well as the listings. The way DK divides the neighborhoods up is useful too. Rough guides published a mini guide, which has much less information than their normal guides. It also is a bit outdated. Try the Rough Guide to Italy.

Best thing to do is go to the Library and take out as much as you can and summarize.

Also, find a map with all the sites marked and work backwards.

I don't think that I've seen Lonely Planet mentioned either -- regarding maps, I find their maps the most exemplary. They typically mark hotels and restaurants directly on various maps, which are quite detailed. I don't use that series often these days, but I really like their maps.

just really fun books to get you going are Barrie Kerper's series on the Collected Traveler. easy to find at B&N, etc. this is not a typical guidebook per se however.