The Rough Guide Italy 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

by Rough Guides (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The most readable, comprehensive and informative guide around." Cosmopolitan Magazine

Product Description
INTRODUCTION

Italy is perhaps Europe’s most complex and alluring destination. It is a modern, industrialized nation, but it is also, to an equal degree, a Mediterranean country, with a southern European sensibility. Agricultural land covers much of the country, a lot of which, especially in the south, is still owned under almost feudal conditions. In towns and villages all over the country, life grinds to a halt in the middle of the day for a siesta, and is strongly family-oriented, with an emphasis on the traditions and rituals of the Catholic Church, which, notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the country’s youth, still dominates people’s lives.

Above all, Italy provokes reaction. Its people are volatile, rarely indifferent, and on one and the same day you might encounter the kind of disdain dished out to tourist masses everywhere and an hour later be treated to embarrassingly generous hospitality. If there is a single national characteristic, it’s to embrace life to the full: in the hundreds of local festivals taking place across the country on any given day, to celebrate a saint or the local harvest; in the importance placed on good food; in the obsession with clothes and image; and above all in the daily domestic ritual of the collective evening stroll or passeggiata – a sociable affair celebrated by young and old alike in every town and village across the country.

Italy only became a unified state in 1861, and, as a result, Italians often feel more loyalty to their region than to the nation as a whole – something manifest in different cuisines, dialects, landscape and often varying standards of living. There is also, of course, the country’s enormous cultural legacy: Tuscany alone has more classified historical monuments than any country in the world; there are considerable remnants of the Roman Empire all over the country, notably of course in Rome itself; and every region retains its own relics of an artistic tradition generally acknowledged to be among the world’s richest.

Yet there’s no reason to be intimidated by the art and architecture. If you want to lie on a beach, there are any number of places to do so: beaches are for the most part sandy; coastal development has been kept relatively under control, and many resorts are still largely the preserve of Italian tourists, while other parts of the coast, especially in the south of the country, are almost entirely undiscovered. Mountains, too, run the country’s length – from the Alps and Dolomites in the north right along the Apennines, which form the spine of the peninsula – and are an important reference-point for most Italians. Skiing and other winter sports are practised avidly, and in the five national parks, protected from the national passion for hunting, wildlife of all sorts thrives.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1215 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 6th edition (June 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843530600
• ISBN-13: 978-1843530602
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,175,261 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a recommended guide for first-time visitors to Italy, January 9, 2004

By	first time backpacker to Italy (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews

I just came back from a 2 week trip to Italy, my first time going there. I have used guides such as LonelyPlanet and Let's Go before, but I selected RoughGuide for this trip because I have heard a lot of good things about the series and as it was one of the most recently published guides for Italy, I was hoping it will have the most updated information.

First of all, the good things about the guide:
1. It does contain a lot of practical information about big and small cities in Italy, and it was immensely useful during my trip.
2. A lot of historical and insightful details for museums and art galleries that went beyond the basics, that I found very useful

However, the good is not enough to overcome the shortcomings of the guide, and that is why I think there must be a better guide for Italy than this and I encourage travelers to seek them out. Some of the things in the guide that really bothered me included:

1. Listing recommended bars and cafes without marking them on the provided map. Without a street index for any map, I was unable to find the places they recommended unless I spend 20 minutes looking at every single street name on the page. As streets in places like Rome, Florence and Venice are very small, this was a very difficult task. I sometimes came to the conclusion that the street for the bar listing was not even in the map provided. Contact information for bars and cafes were not provided, so it was not even possible to call them to ask for directions.

2. No layout plan/map for large museums and galleries. When I came to places like the Vatican, the Roman Forums and the Uffizi, I found it difficult to locate important "sights" with only word directions (i.e. on the right of the second altar...... or on the left side of that first pile of rubble.....) This is especially a problem when I sometimes found myself coming in from a different entrance than the one the writers used. It would have been a lot simpler if they included a map of the museum itself. This was especially difficult in the Uffizi in Florence. They would describe a painting as being in room 6, but room numbers are not displayed for every room in the Uffizi. The rooms are also not clearly shaped and defined, and I did not even realize I had crossed four rooms until I looked at my friend's guide to see I was no longer in room 3, but in room 7.

3. Not really a guide for roughing it. For Siena, the category of inexpensive dining means a meal for less than Euro 20. This is actually quite expensive for a backpacker on a budget.

4. Not very thorough directions. In Siena, information is given for how to get to the train station from the city centre, but no information is given for getting back to the train station (the bus drop off and pick off points are in different parts of the city). To get from Naples to Pompeii, they list taking the train to Torre Annuziata and then switching to another line, but you save yourself a lot of trouble if you just take train to Sorrento.

5. Lack of low budget accommodation listings. There are a lot of listings for hotels, but there is hardly enough listings of hostels. Even when there are listings, the comments they offer are not very helpful to help me decide whether it is a hostel that is worth using.

All in all, this guide did help me a lot. At the same time, I am quite certain I would have been able to find the same help in another guide to Italy, that would have offered better directions and descriptions of famous sights. Perhaps this is a good guide if you are already quite familiar with Italy, because it does offer information for smaller towns and out of the way places. However, for a first time backpacker to the country who was interested in seeing the big and medium-sized sights, I found it lacking a lot of information that would have been helpful.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful for trip to Italy team cut combine 2nd book, April 10, 2004

By	10za "10za" (Alpharetta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

What I like best about the Rough Guides is that they give critical reviews. They will point out the tourist traps and will give negative reviews. I find that Frommer's and Fodor's rarely point out the negatives to a particular hotel or site. The rough guide is very critical and is a great balance to these other guides. I would balance your trip to Italy with a Fodors (or Frommers) book because the maps and illustrations are often better and there are more higher-end hotels listed.
This book will help you decide where is best to spend your vacation in Italy. There are clear critical descriptions of all the regions and great general info on getting around in Italy.

If you aren't interested in "roughing" it and staying in lower priced hotels. The guides are still very useful in rating attractions, and areas in which to stay... but you will need another book to look at more moderate and luxury hotels.

I would definitely read this book before going to Italy.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Check out another guide book instead, July 12, 2005

By	J. Pierce (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I lived in Italy from August 2003 to August 2004 and before leaving I bought this guidebook. I would have been better off with no guidebook at all. The information in Rough Guide Italy (e.g., prices for hostels, opening/closing times for attractions, etc.) was consistently wrong to the point that I questioned whether anyone had attempted to verify what was printed in the last ten years. Rough Guide, in an attempt to differentiate itself from Lets Go and Lonely Planet, spends a lot of time on "off the beaten track" areas. This is generally good but it seems that in some cases cities do no merit the praise heaped upon them (i.e., Rough Guide does this solely in order to offer something different). Anyway, the point is that I had the opportunity to use Rough Guide countless times over the year. The historical information is not bad but its practical value is seriously lacking. Rough Guide, if you're listening it would be in your best interest to update your stuff!