Customer Reviews

Blue Guide Venice (Blue Guides Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want to explore the soul of Venice, if you want to absorb every square centimeter of her charm, if you don't want to miss a thing, if you want to know all about every delightful thing you see, this is your guide book and none other. You'll never find these wonderful places any other way, and you'll never wonder what you're looking at anywhere in Venice.

The Blue Guides are incomparable: the are indispensable for a lover of the visual arts, a history buff, or a committed traveller.

If you are looking for a guide that will help you "narrow down" the choices of sights to see in Venice, this one is not for you. If you are looking for extensive lists and reviews of hotels, again this is not for you. Finally, if you're looking for detailed restauraunt information, you won't find it here. Basically, this guide is not a planning guide. I have used the Internet for most of my planning (e-mail me if you need some help finding some great sites MarySorens@hotmail.com).

What this guide does have to offer is an amazing amount of cultural, historic, and artistic information in a very packable sized guide. This will be the guide to read when you are doing your own tours of Venice. It will tell you far more than any tour guide would.

This guide also has map pages included. At first they are difficult to read and understand. But once you get the hang of them, you will love them. They are very detailed, and who wants to be seen walking around a city with a two foot map in their face??

The blue guide also gets you oriented to the city. Even if you don't use the Blue Guide's walks, they will show you which attractions are grouped together and will help you plan your routes (this is the one sense in which this guide works for planning). I haven't left yet,and my guide looks worn!

In conclusion, I am putting together my own itinerary that will contain details like restaurant and hotel addresses. And then this will be the only guidebook that I take with me to Venice. And I am looking forward to reading it and absorbing as much of the city as possible! If you are remotely interested in history and art and more, you will not regret purchasing this guide. I have used many guidebooks for trips, and the Blue Guides are the most informative and educated.

As an alternative to buying a souvenir guide to every site experienced, and missing a great deal more along the way, the Guide contains the specific and important details of major churches, museums, galleries and palazzos. I have used the Guide in Rome and found no need for additional guides. Focus is on what you'll see on your walks, and what you should see. No color pictures, fewer "ads" for stores and restaurants -- tho there are some -- but valuable-to-essential to the tourist serious about the experience in Venice.

The amazingly rich Blue Guides have been around for years and years - I recently bought a hardback Rome Blue Guide from 1964! - and they just keep getting better and better. If you're like me, and have a passion for art and history, they're the best guides available. No glossy photos, and dense with details, they're not the book for everyone - but because they concisely describe nearly every corner of the city, they ARE the guidebook for some of us.

I use other guidebooks for planning (Access is excellent, and Littlewood's "A Literary Companion to Venice" is great for walking tours) but the Blue Guide is only one I carry in my purse every day in Venice.

This is a new and expanded edition. This is not a general guide book. This focuses on the art and architecture of Venice. There are lots of excellent pictures of various paintings.
All churches and other sites are located on excellent quality maps at the end of the book.
This book is probably best studied before you go. Find the sites you want to see and find a convenient way to visit several of these during the days of your visit.
This book will be dry and academic to readers who aren't art buffs.

As always the Blue Guides are the best for art history, general history and even the restaurent recs are not that bad! For reference, I have been to Venice several times and I always refer to this great book!

The best guide book to Venice ever published. It's all there: art, architecture, history, maps....

A must for the serious traveler who wants to learn it all.

Some travelers recommend the Blue Guide to Venice, especially for its walking itineraries. It doesn't have information on restaurants or hotels. It is an excellent reference, perhaps bring it with you and read up on each site before you leave your hotel room, but it is very very detailed and, in my opinion, dry reading. I like the Links book "Venice for Pleasure" better because there is much detail and history, but the tone is conversational; for me the Blue Guide is like reading an instruction manual.