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Rating: 
Summary: One Of The Most Informative Guides To Rome
Review: I have been to Italy five times and I swear by the Blue Guides! I was lucky enough to get the Blue Guide Rome for Christmas, from a friend, before the first trip and I have taken that same copy every time since! From hotels to restaurants, from shopping to sightseeing, you'll find all of the important information you need to feel comfortable traveling to Rome, and more importantly, you'll feel confident as you take your daily excursions around the "eternal city". The only other book you ever need to travel around Rome is the Eyewitness Guide Rome. With those two guides, you have all the important information and pictures you'll ever need and more! I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Don't ever go to Rome with only this guide!
Review: I just returned from a trip to Europe and spent several days in Rome... So this guide gets great reviews... True, the historical and cultural sections are fine. They didn't include any colour photographs, o. k., might be their style. But to sell a - not even cheap - guide that doesn't even have an underground map?! The maps in general aren't worth the paper they're printed on. You're certain to get lost in the city if you trust this guide. If you want to bother bringing this guide along a "real" guide, be my guest, but I, for one, expect more of a city guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Serves a specific purpose
Review: If you are looking for a guide to do EVERYTHING, you can probably do better. Certainly, if you only want to bring one book, this probably isn't it. However, I wouldn't dare go to Rome without it. Rome is an amazing city, where the smallest church may seem like nothing from the outside. But go in, open your Blue Guide and suddenly you realize that there's a Caravaggio or a Bernini on the premises. I don't use a guide such as this for planning. I use it for reference while I'm in the city. I'd have missed PLENTY without it. For the purpose it serves for me, it's the best there is!
Rating:
Summary: Serves a specific purpose
Review: If you are looking for a guide to do EVERYTHING, you can probably do better. Certainly, if you only want to bring one book, this probably isn't it. However, I wouldn't dare go to Rome without it. Rome is an amazing city, where the smallest church may seem like nothing from the outside. But go in, open your Blue Guide and suddenly you realize that there's a Caravaggio or a Bernini on the premises. I don't use a guide such as this for planning. I use it for reference while I'm in the city. I'd have missed PLENTY without it. For the purpose it serves for me, it's the best there is!
Rating:
Summary: The Most Solid Guide To Rome
Review: If you want to not just see but understand, appreciate and live the history which is Rome, this book is your guide. It might not provide the listing of cheap eating establishments or the best bars, but it is a travel guide and a reference book that you will continue to use long after you have left Rome.
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Summary: "Blue Guide" means "Blue Guide" (uninitiated need not apply)
Review: Let's be clear. This "guide" book is usually standard textbook fare for the 35 American students chosen to study at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (ICCS) in Rome. Why? Between two covers and kept in your sachel, it offers everything a student would need to know about the Roman ruins that might have been the Temple to Spes or the iconography of a Caravaggio hanging in ... wait, a minute, what church are we in? The Blue Guide series is for those who are looking for a little education amongst their travels. As such, it usually needs supplementing with a more popular, flashy compendium of phone numbers or restaurants. At least now we're clear (but don't begrudge it).
Rating:
Summary: An in-depth and satisfying guide to the Eternal City
Review: On my first trip to Rome, unable to read posted tourist information or afford expensive tours, I longed for in-depth historical and cultural information about the sights I was seeing. The second time I went I still had no Italian and no money, but I had a Blue Guide, and it made all the difference. This is not the most practical guidebook to use for making reservations and getting around--the sections on hotels and transportation are cursory. But once you're there, staring at that tantalizing church or monument, the Blue Guide will tell you everything you could want to know about it. Coverage of the Forum and Palatine Hill is especially good; two detailed maps and dozens of pages of text allow you to dig in and begin to understand what you're seeing. The Blue Guide also includes several pages of color maps of the city, which make a good supplement to the red-covered Pianta della Citta available from any street vendor. Overall, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a fine guide to the historical/cultural sites
Review: This book divides Rome into 29 walking tours. Each one takes about a day. Maybe you could do two per day in the summer. A few of the tours have a common theme, but most of them just cover a region of the city. The focus is on cultural/historical sites. There's very little about where to eat, sleep, or shop. The author is thorough and provides a lot of insight. The book reads as a folksy continuous narrative by a knowledgeable and perceptive guide. If you have a month in Rome, you could use this book to get a great tour. Many tourists would find this book difficult to use. Suppose you're in Rome for a few days, not nearly enough time to walk all 29 tours. There is no easy way to use this book to prioritize which sites to visit. The Michelin Green Guide has a similar aim and focus, but is much more user-friendly for a short visit. It breaks the city into a smaller number of regional walks. In general it's not quite as thorough as the Blue Guide in terms of what it says about each site and the number of sites it includes. The Michelin Guide has a system of one, two, and three stars to prioritize the sites. This makes it easy for the user to just hit the highlights.
Rating:
Summary: a fine guide to the historical/cultural sites
Review: This book divides Rome into 29 walking tours. Each one takes about a day. Maybe you could do two per day in the summer. A few of the tours have a common theme, but most of them just cover a region of the city. The focus is on cultural/historical sites. There's very little about where to eat, sleep, or shop. The author is thorough and provides a lot of insight. The book reads as a folksy continuous narrative by a knowledgeable and perceptive guide. If you have a month in Rome, you could use this book to get a great tour. Many tourists would find this book difficult to use. Suppose you're in Rome for a few days, not nearly enough time to walk all 29 tours. There is no easy way to use this book to prioritize which sites to visit. The Michelin Green Guide has a similar aim and focus, but is much more user-friendly for a short visit. It breaks the city into a smaller number of regional walks. In general it's not quite as thorough as the Blue Guide in terms of what it says about each site and the number of sites it includes. The Michelin Guide has a system of one, two, and three stars to prioritize the sites. This makes it easy for the user to just hit the highlights.
Rating:
Summary: best guide book for the serious traveller
Review: This is quite simply the most informative, most in-depth guide book currently available on Rome. This book will not pretend to uncover the secret of the best restaurant or pensione in the city. Instead, it gives the reader a well-written synopsis of every important monument in a city so rich in myth and history. For the traveller interested in going beyond colour photos of the Pantheon, this book is indispensible.
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