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Summary: Great book for remembering your trip
Review: After looking through all the guides at the bookstore, we chose this one because it provided the most information in the most readily-accessible manner. We carried it around with us during our week in Rome and found it immensely helpful. Judging from the copies in the other tourists' hands, this is the most popular guide out there, and for good reason.
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Summary: Make Eyewitness essential part of your travel fun
Review: DK's Eyewitness Travel Guides are our best travel companion during our tour of Europe. Full of tips, pictures, maps, site info, history, local reference ... every page is not only helpful but beautiful. The layout anf format is very innovative and reader friendly, a ture standing out from any other travel books. It was interesting to see that almost everywhere we went, we saw other people (tourists apparently) holding and checking the same DK book on the street.
The coverage is comprehensive and growing year after year, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice ... every city we went have its own Eyewitness serie. We studied them before our trip, consulted them during our trip, and kept them as memo and photo book after our trip. They are simply essential part of the travel fun.I recommend buying indiviual city/area book wherever possible instead of the country book. For example, buy Rome, Florence, and Venice books instead of Eyewitness Italy (unless your destination doesn't have its own Eyewitness). That way you get more detailed and targeted info.
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Summary: Don't leave home with out this guide
Review: Dorling Kindersley makes the best travel guides hands down. They are extremely well illustrated, have extensive and detailed maps (thank god, because I tend to get lost very easily and it is even easier to get lost in Rome), up to date information on hotels (rates, rooms etc), restaurants (costs and reservation policies), and sites to see. This is a more detailed look at Rome than their Italy book, which is also fabulous. The travel guides have wonderful pictures, well researched histories and facts about Rome (not just about the city as it stands today but a whole history of Rome from it's glory days), what wines and foods that one should try, detailed walking tours, information on famous art (there is a great section on the Sistine Chapel and all of the figures you will find in each panel). The book also covers the best places to shop (and there are SO many in Rome), where to get good deals on leather and other wonderful things. The book give you wonderful ideas on how to see the city in a limited time or really enjoy it if you are there for more than a few days. The book also covers things to do that many tourists might over look as well as telling you what is worth your while and what to skip. The book also covers customs, money changing, travel information - you name it! This is one of the best guides available on the market.
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Summary: Outstandingly strong, still the leader
Review: Eyewitness has transformed the face of a modern style guide and raised expectations worldwide, the guide to Rome is a good example of a one-stop book for your trip. If you are taking only one book to Rome (however, I will suggest that the Eternal City deserves more than that; I used it together with City Secrets and Access, with a very good result), Eyewitness Rome should probably be that book. Very, very good maps and detailed, visually captivating and supremely usable charts of the main attractions are the strongest point of this book. In the obvious places like the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's it beats other guides hands down: the truth is, you will probably have very little time and the viewing conditions will be far removed from ideal, and the Eyewitness charts and pictures (often dismissed by snobs as too glossy and too nice) will be just what the doctor ordered. Eyewitness Guide is far less detailed, even superficial, where less popular points of interest are concerned. This is where your second (or third) book will come handy. I like brief but confident details of history, illustrated timelines and especially the lip-smackingly beautiful images of the Italian food. Do not expect this book to give you too much guidance about finding everything on the cheap: it is not a backpacker's guide and does not pretend to be one. Guidance on hotels and restaurants is adequate but not awesome, it is evident that this is not the main point of the book. While I am complaining, do you think they could get rid of this annoying cliche title: "Survival Guide". What do you think it is, a jungle? How many tourists die trying to book a hotel and order a meal? Try to think before writing, and you'll be fine. And a little bit of livelier language would not hurt, either, because sometimes the style is so cautious it seems it was written by libel lawyers. But again - overall a very good book, make it your first purchase before setting off to Rome.
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Summary: I swear by the DK Eyewitness Guides!
Review: For years I've sworn by the DK Eyewitness Guide to Florence and Tuscany, and now I'm reading with great pleasure the DK Guide to Rome, which I will visit this year for the first time. Thanks to DK, I already feel as if I've stood at the top of the Spanish Steps, or in the Sistine Chapel staring up at Michelangelo's ceiling. The text is wide-ranging, succinct and informative; the gorgeous pictures whet your travel appetite; and the enclosed maps, phrase book, hotel and restaurant recommendations, etc. are abundantly helpful. When I go to Rome, the DK guide will be the only guidebook I carry.
Rating:
Summary: good for site-seeing & info, recommendations not good
Review: 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.
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Summary: THE essential Rome guide
Review: I had the good fortune to enroll in a class in graduate school that allowed me to spend over three weeks in Rome and its immediate environs. During that time, I was treated to lectures from architects, archaeologists, historians, and the like. Despite all my touring with know-it-alls, I found myself returning to the Top 10 Rome Guide to re-orient myself - where exactly were we when we saw that? Its maps are superb and the compact size makes it the only book you are really willing to carry amidst the Roman summer heat. I would reccomend the book to any would-be travelor, even an experienced veteran.
N.B.: some of the entrance prices for museums are no longer accurate - add 3 to 4 Euros each to adjust.
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Summary: Complete Guide with Beutiful Visuals
Review: I have to confess up front. I love these books. I must have a dozen. I really like the Paris book, Rome, and the one for Prague, and Stockholm, and South Africa, and .... You get all the detailed material similar to other great travel books plus you get great visuals. On a cold day back here in the USA (or Canada) or elsewhere, have a glass of wine and sit in a nice chair or in the garden on a warm day and read this book. For a moment you will be back in traveling. The photos are that good. As I said, the photos and descriptions and the cutaway drawings are excellent and more than make up for any lack of small detail. But there is lots of detail here. The book includes the history of the city and many details on the art, art galleries, parks, culture, historical figures, cutaway views of historical buildings, and many other things of interest. The history is summarized at the beginning of the book with historical time lines and cross referenced to the culture and political figures. A solid effort - lots of stuff to see and absorb. It has the other things too such as maps, accommodations, transportation, and the rest. You will be pleasantly surprised with the depth and quality of this book and it makes a nice souvenir to refresh your memory when you get home. Jack in Toronto
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Summary: From a Holiday Present to A Vacation
Review: 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.
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Summary: perfect for quick trips and even more
Review: I recently spent two days in Rome with this book as my only guide and it was perfect. However, you could fill up a much longer trip just with the itineraries and suggestions from this book. I didn't even have time to hit all of the top 10 and there are probably over 50 different important sites recommended, described, and mapped out in this book. My favorite feature in the book is that in addition to the more general listings of restuarants, there are restaurants grouped by location right with the descriptions of the different sites. So, for example, if you're standing outside the Pantheon, as I did, thinking, hmm, it sure would be nice to get something to eat right about now... There's a list of restuarants in a number of price ranges that are located around the Pantheon, for example. Makes it easy either to plan out days either ahead of time or to make spontaneous decisions. Personally, I wish I had done a bit more reading and research before I went. The information in this book is not very in depth, as you might expect from a top 10 book. However, there's no need to tote along a history book in your suitcase, and this little book does give surprisingly good overviews and juicy tidbits. A tiny hint aside from the book, I found that many of the sites in Rome did not take as long to see as I thought. The Collosseum, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, were all surprisingly quick visits, it doesn't take long to appreciate and there isn't a great deal of detail to go into. Of course, this all depends on your tastes. I would have spent longer at the Vatican than I did, taken a couple tours. Also, be advised that the Sistine Chapel keeps weird hours from what I understand, so plan around it. And as for the Forum, or Il Foro Romano, nothing is labeled, and there are no official tours as far as I know, so learn about it beforehand if you want to fully appreciate it. That is my completely off-the-cuff, amateur and unsubstantiated advice. : )
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