The Rough Guide Venice Map

Rating:
Summary: Best Venice Map
Review: I'm just back from three weeks in Venice. Because I'm obsessive, I ended up taking along four maps: Street Smart, Lonely Planet, National Geographic, and the Rough Guide map. I thought I'd share my experiences.

Many people who go to Venice stick to the main walkways between the most important tourist spots: the Accademia, the Rialto Bridge, and San Marco square. I am not that sort of person. I walked all over the city: along the waterfronts of Dorsoduro and Cannaregio, through the parks of Castello and Sant'Elena, and to all the churches I could find. I also found that taking non-standard routes between well-known places avoided the street merchants and pedestrian crush. You can see what I was putting my maps through.

The Rough Guide map was the most useful map I took to Venice. It's printed on waterproof plastic, which is useful in the drizzle. I'm rough on things: it never tore. It was easy enough to fold the map in such a way that it was convenient to carry and still showed the area I was walking through. Most importantly, time and again when using one of the other maps I'd find myself in some twistly little spot where the map and reality were not in sync: a missing bridge, roads not shaped this way, etc. Each time, I'd turn to the Rough Guide and find that it was correct where the others weren't.

The Rough Guide map is larger than the other maps, which makes it harder to use if you want a "big-picture" view of the city while walking. On the other hand, the Rough Guide map is larger than the other maps, which means you can read it without a spotlight and a magnifying glass ;). Its size is part of its utility: because it's easy enough to fold, its size was no problem.

If you are going to be hunting down specific addresses or leaving the beaten path, I believe the Rough Guide is a must-have. If you can afford two maps, take the National Geographic map for strategy and the Rough Guide for tactics, and you'll be delighted.