Customer Reviews

Rome (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Do not go to Rome without this book! I read this book before going and was able to get an idea of what Rome was about, but when I arrived, this book did not leave my hands! This guide divides Rome into sections. We set out agenda according to sections in the book. The street-by-street map was invaluable and we were never lost. I am the worst with directions, but I knew extactly where I was during each day. With the maps, I navigated instead of my husband! The cut aways and guides to the various museums and attractions were also invaluable. We were able to walk into any attraction and know what the star features were and not have to miss a thing. We did not have to buy the extra tour books in each museum because our Eyewitness Guide gave us all the information we need and then some. Not only was I the navigator, but I was our personal tour guide. With the book, I was able to read out loud to my husband and tell him about everything we saw in Rome. There were many other tourist with the Eyewitnes Guides in their hands and I was pleasantly surprised to see the book in so many different languages. A tourist even came up to me at the Trevi Fountain asking me where I got the book because she saw so many people with it, and she was disappointed when I said I got it in the States because she was ready to pick up a copy immediately.

You can forget the credit cards, but DO NOT LEAVE HOME WITH THIS ONE!

I received the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Rome for Christmas, along with several other books in the DK series. Happily, I spied a bargain travel package to Rome the next weekend, signed my wife and myself up, and haven't put the book down yet. The detail on each neighborhood and major sites is giving me a chance to plan each day and to prioritize dozens of sites. The immensity of Rome and the expansive lists of sites in the book assures me that I'm going to see exactly what I want, but I've been able to experience, at least through the descriptions, evrything that I'll miss. The reason I took one star off is that it's great for planning, but I most likely will leave the book at home and take a short list with us. The two drawbacks I've found are (1) the maps are too tiny, leaving out a lot of cross-street names to really be useful on site, and (2) the walking tours don't seem as interesting as in other DK books (I followed several of the London tours and have been fascinated by reading the Paris tours). I feel that I'll be better off with a notebook of plans, addresses,etc., a better set of walking guides, and a pocket-sized, more durable map. But, I'll also have a great keeper of a souvenier when we get home.

We just returned from Rome and I can honestly say this book was worth every cent. The map in the back is very detailed, much more so than other books and hotel maps. The museum diagrams and photos were also very useful. The back flap of the cover works as a fantastic and useful bookmark. Good phrases and pronunciations, good symbols, metro and bus information was very helpful, and the photos were excellent. You see tourists of every corner of the world carrying this book. Only negative is that there wasn't information on how organized tours really aren't worth the money, unlike I found in a Rick Steves book after the fact. (By the way - if you are going to Rome, avoid almost every organized tour as they rush you through and you don't get to see everything - especially at the Vatican). I will buy from the same publisher next time I travel!!

Pro: I am a visual kind of guy and 3D cross section pictures and diagrams helps a lot. Nice colorful pictures and nice recommended neighborhood walks. At home, it also serves as a nice coffee table book.

Con: The glossy heavy stock papers, though nice to look at is a bit heavy to put in your pockets and walk around with it. Also the hotel and restaurant sectiion needs a bit of bulking up.

There is no such thing as the perfect guidebook, but after 13 years of using them I've been most impressed by the Eyewitness series. I used this book in college when I went to Rome for 6 weeks, the London book when I lived in the UK for two years, and I bought the latest edition of the Rome and Florence books this year for my Italian honeymoon. I also brought along Rick Steves and Blue Guide to field-test them, but I used Eyewitness the most by a long shot. Rick Steves is very good for practical travel tips, but little else. Blue Guides are very good for historical/artistic/architectural detail, but they can be cumbersome and aren't the easiest to use while traveling. I made a point to notice which guides other travelers were using around Italy, and I saw Eyewitness guides far more than any other, carried in an amazing variety of language editions by travelers from all over the world.

Eyewitness guides are colorful, filled with photos, easy to carry, user-friendly, and they have great city maps. They provide a comprehensive overview that lets you decide what you want to see. They're also very durable and hold up extremely well in the rain. Foldout covers on front and back provide very handy bookmarks. They have their downsides too, of course: the restaurant and hotel recommendations are hit and miss (as with most guidebooks), the books are not always updated annually, and the short Italian dictionary in the back is all but useless.

This book will guide you to the places you most want to see in and around Rome. It won't tell you a lot about them when you get there, but for many travelers it's more than enough. I like to have more historical, artistic and architectural detail handy when I travel to a place like Italy, so I also travel with the much more detailed Blue Guides. But, if you're only going to bring one guidebook, I recommend Eyewitness.

I suppose if you want more information regarding hotels and restaurants then some of the more exhaustive guides would be your choice, but the DK guidebooks offer so much more in the way of insights and illustrations into the cities and countries they cover. Rome is no exception. I suppliment these books by turning to the web for more timely information regarding hotels, restaurants and transportation, but what I want most in a guidebook is pertinent information regarding the sites I want to see, such as the Vatican Museum, Piazza Navona and the Spanish Steps. DK does it one better by providing plenty of beautiful illustrations to give you a visual sense of the city as well and providing interesting historical asides. The only guides that compare are the Knopf illustrated guides but they are often out of date and can't be relied on for key information.

My work has provided me with the opportunity to travel a good bit. I am the type of person who wants to get a working background for my destinations, both in terms of history and geographic layout. Because I work, I don't have a great deal of time to spend reading and studying different, often lengthy, travel guides before or during my trips.

Because these guides are concise, beautifully illustrated, relatively compact, and impeccably organized, I cannot recommend highly enough the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides! The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide is THE guide I buy for every destination. Not only do I get a quick history and background of the destination, but I also will be provided with a visual guide to everything. The visual detail is really what sets the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides apart.

The street maps of common destination points are drawn in dimensional detail so you will visually recognize when you "get there." This is particularly helpful when you don't speak the native language.

The regional maps are colorful and concise. However, the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide really shows its stuff with the drawings associated with attractions such as museums and churches. Their presentation of building layouts allow the traveler who is short on time to quickly see the best of the attraction within the time the traveler has to spend.

With so many attractions, museums, and churches to see in Rome, these illustrations become priceless. Not only did they help me maximize my time on site, but they also helped me to pick and choose between the ones I had time to see, and the ones that would have to wait for the next visit.

Each DK Eyewitness Travel Guide has a good summary section in the back with practical information about where to eat, where to sleep, what to do, and how to get around.

While I may supplement the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide with others for a more detailed travel guide, the other guide is only more to read, not more to see. Buy the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide first for any destination.

The Eyewitness Series from DK (not just Rome) is head and shoulders above any other travel guides. Unbelievable amount of details, street maps, schematics, and generally useful (and usable) information. Excellent! You won't use any other travel guides once you've used these.

This is the book I took into the streets with me in Rome. It has the best maps, very thorough descriptions and gorgeous pictures/architectural diagrams of the major and minor sites. If there was additional information I had gleaned from another book, I would post-it-note it into this one. At 432 pages it is a little heavier than the normal DK Guide, too thick to fit into a back pocket, but the one guide to take with you during your explorations. Excellent for pre-trip planning and hotel selection. A very practical, attractive, useable book.

I bought this book before going to Rome on a 2 month internship during the high tourist season of July and August. As a student, I wasn't going on a luxury vacation, but I wasn't searching for the bargain basement, cheap vacation either.

All the information, pictures, and historical tidbits for sight-seeing is very well done and useful. The area-by-area maps also help in planning a day of sight-seeing.

The maps in the back are a little confusing since they are spread over 10 pages, but they're good enough to not get lost.

My main problem with the book are the shop and restaurant recommendations. I would recommend trusting your own intuition for finding restaurants. There's quite a few very good ones where you can have a full meal for under 20 euro in Trastevere and near the Spanish Steps. For comparison, the lowest cost bracket in the guide book starts at 25 euro and most prices were significantly higher than what the guide book stated.

I would highly recommend learning a little Italian before going since it will make the shop owners much friendlier and the conmen around the tourist attractions a little less persistent. The language audio CD's are a buy since you can listen to them on the plane.