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Title: The Rough Guide to Italy by Ros Belford, Rough Guides, Martin Dunford, Celia Woolfrey, Rob Andrews, Ceila Woolfrey ISBN: 1-85828-692-1 Publisher: Rough Guides Pub. Date: 31 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: the best
Comment: Now, a lot of people want their guidebooks to be long lists of hotels plus a list of the authors' idea of the most important places. If, however, you don't plan your itinerary ahead, so you always seem to end up at the hostel cause that's the only open place left, accomadation listings are less important. Let's Go usually has more extensive budget sleeps, but neither it nor Lonely Planet can compare for the coverage of out of the way places. Some people want a guidebook with lots of pictures to show them where they want to go. Rough Guides you have to read, and you have to read them carefully. There's a certain skill involved, because they don't show a strong ranking of "desirableness," and they don't shy from the less-perfect sides of what is, after all, a real, contemporary country, not a museum. The upside (and it's a big upside) is that you can find places that never make it into the other books. I was in Italy last summer, and I spent days in Gubbio (in Umbria), and Peschici (in Puglia). When I'd talk to people in hostels later on in big towns, they would never have heard of the places I'd loved, because they weren't mentioned in their guidebooks. There is so much more to Italy that what you can get out of an Insight Guide or a Let's Go, and you owe it to yourself to find some of it. Sure, it's heavy, and some of the maps are inferior, but there are a lot of them, and they're for places Let's Go has never seen.
Rating: 2
Summary: "It's a "rough" guide, no doubt about that...
Comment: I picked up this Rough Guide to Italy for a brief trip to Umbria and Lazio because my local shop sold out of the Let's Go equivalent.
It annoyed me intensely.
Firstly, it is unreasonably negative in tone throughout - someone who hadn't been there could be forgiven for thinking Italy is a crummy place with only a few mouldy monuments and the odd fresco to recommend it, which as a general impression is criminally wrong, and it's astounding that a guidebook should set out to give it. P>Secondly, Some of the maps aren't accurate and don't appear to have been checked or proof read. Throwaway lines such as "[the tourist office has] lots of reasonable but characterless rooms on their books and appartments to rent" on the basis of my anecdotal evidence simply aren't fair -
Thirdly it's dreadfully turgid. Cheeky charm in a guide of this sort is obligatory these days, but the writing style is frequently leaden. Witness the following insight, which is typically put: "Of all Italy's historic cities, it's perhaps Rome which exerts the most compelling fascination." Good grief.
Plus points - the "contexts" section, which overviews art, architecture, history, and the political and social set-up in italy (you know, the mafia, camorra and all that good stuff!), is a good read. There are plenty of maps of little places, too, but they're not collosally accurate. There are a few fairly uninteresting colour pics, but for my money they could have been left out and a buck shaved off the cover price.
There must be better guides to Italy than this.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent
Comment: The majority of reviewers have missed the point. This guide is a very useful, functional and easy to use guide in travelling around Italy. The guide concentrates on the basic stuff - the major things to see and do, hotels/accomodation, getting around. It's style is entertaining, which is very useful, especially sometimes when you are waiting for a train or bus that never arrives, and its necessary sometimes to have a sense of humour when traveling. The guide came in extremely useful. Its only draw back is its size, and its sometimes not recommended to drawn attention to your self when you need to pul out such a thick tourist guide.
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Title: The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian (Icon Editions Ser.) by Bruce Cole ISBN: 006430129X Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: March, 1984 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Rough Guide France (France (Rough Guides)) by Kate Baillie, Tim Salmon, Brian Catlos ISBN: 1843530562 Publisher: Rough Guides Pub. Date: July, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Italian a Rough Guide Dictionary Phrasebook (Rough Guide Phrasebook) by Rough Guides ISBN: 185828578X Publisher: Rough Guides Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.00 |
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Title: Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art by A. Richard Turner, Richard A. Turner ISBN: 0131833537 Publisher: Prentice Hall Press Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Rick Steves' Italy 2004 by Rick Steves ISBN: 1566915333 Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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