Don't buy this if you expect to find information on the southern Italian mainland.

The map at the front of this book sums up its disappointing lack of coverage of southern Italy. The map stops at the Amalfi coast and does not show the "foot" part of the country. Rick Steves' Italian mainland ends at a line drawn between Paestum and Manfredonia. So .... no Lecce, no Matera, no Otranto - there's absolutely nothing on Puglia. Truncated map = truncated coverage.

The title should be "Rick Steves Most of Italy 2008".

Mr. Steves supplies a wealth of information for MOST of Italy, but unfortunately for those of us who desire to see Southern Italy, the book is not helpful. I would also like to suggest that Mr. Steves refrain from denigrating U.S. tourists. Many of us are well-seasoned travellers and can enjoy other cultures without the immature lectures offered by Steves.

Mr. Steves supplies a wealth of information for MOST of Italy, but unfortunately for those of us who desire to see Southern Italy, the book is not helpful. I would also like to suggest that Mr. Steves refrain from denigrating U.S. tourists. Many of us are well-seasoned travellers and can enjoy other cultures without the immature lectures offered by Steves.

What this guide covers it covers well but be forewarned that the title is a misnomer. Much of Italy is missing. Italy south of the Amalfi Coast on the West, nope. South of Ravenna on the Adriatic, nope. Sicily, nope. Sardinia, nope. To avoid disappointment make sure this guide covers the parts of Italy you plan to visit before you buy it.

It takes a little use to get used to the basic order of the city-specific information (intro, sights, hotels, food + other info). After you do, though, the guide is AMAZING. The self-guided walks in Rome are not to be missed.

My girlfriend and I got this guide after reading some pretty good reviews here about Rick Steves' Italy. Rick Steves provided money saving tips like the Roma Pass which was useful and helped us saved time and money. His tip to call and reserve tickets with the galleries was a handy shortcut and allowed us to skip the queues. We saved some money by showing this book to a few hotels and restaurants too.

Little did we know that the poorly hand-drawn maps were to lead us in merry-go-rounds around Milan, Florence, Rome and Venice. Some of the recommended restaurants like Dante's Pizzatoria in Florence and Princi's at Milan were outright dishonest and rude. On top of that, the written directions to several places were vague. For example, we were unable to locate a recommended hotel in Venice listed on the guide even after two hours of relentless search.

To be fair to Rick, his information on Ferry transfer and train information were largely helpful. However, it would have been preferred if Rick had included cultural pointers for Asians. Having said this, we would like to prepare Asian or non-European travelers heading to Florence to handle their unique form of hospitality. Please note that our experiences at the city were less than pleasant.

We recommend that you get a proper map along with this book or have a look at Fodor's Italy 2008.

Rick Steves states his approach to travel in Italy clearly: he doesn't cover everything in the country, just the "best" places, the best according to him, of course. If your tastes and orientation align with his (interesting, moderately priced travel, including as much local immersion as is reasonable), then this book provides the wonderful backbone of a great trip. For visiting places other than his "best" you will want a more comprehensive guide book, like Lonely Planet, in addition to (rather than instead of) this one.

Steves' enthusiasm for "Europe's richest, craziest culture" comes through in every page while his practical suggestions from an often humorous perspective makes this book sound like personal advice from a friend who knows the area well. I find his information extremely accurate and insightful, based on my own experiences living in Italy for a year. Now I rely on his detailed, up-to-date information about important sights, accommodations (three levels of moderate prices), transportation, and dining (or picnicking, snacking, drinking, etc.) to help me plan return trips.

-Lynn Michelsohn, author of Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!

This book came highly recommended and is awesome. We're looking forward to our visit to Italy.

I think this is a great resource for those who have never been to Italy and need some basic information. The book is comprehensive covering all the regions of Italy, great to use during stages of preparation. I would highly recommend also buying "its companion", the Eyewitness Italy Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guide) book because it'll cover the history and art more in depth.

Dude, get the book. It saved us a ton of time in picking up our tix at the Palatine hills rather than at the Coliseum. It also got us to St. Peter's at 1pm with a 30 min wait, rather than do what everyone else does which is to arrive at 9am and have a 3 hour wait.

The tips alone is certainly worth worth every penny. Let's not forget the key things to see in his book and the slight bit of history on each place. However, I found the restaurants really difficult to find in Italy, but I had a tough time finding the Coliseum too:P

Rick Steves did a great job on his ITALY 2008 book. I was going to the Cinque Terre and he has a great breakdown for that area in the book. Also, he made good calls on nearby Pisa and Lucca. Steves said that one need not spend A LOT of time in these cities and he is right. A few hours to see the main sights in Pisa (3 including the leaning tower) are fine and a good 2-hour walk-a-round in Lucca is enough too. Special Note on Lucca: Puccini was born in Lucca and they perform recitals of his works in one of the churches there. This would be worth an overnight to catch a recital if you want to soak in more culture than you can from just street scenes. Suggestion: travel to Pisa early in the day, visit the Field of Miracles, then end up in Lucca in the PM (short train ride between the two) for your overnight. Do your Lucca walk-a-round PLUS attend a Puccini recital. Then you will have done most if not all of what you should do in these two "competing" towns. Steves points out stuff like this. This was the first time I used a Steves book. Normally I use Michelin Green Guides. But now I would use more tour books by Steves. His style is engaging, even if sometimes it might be a bit preachy for those of us who already know how to mind our (American) manners! In my travels in early June 2008 I did not see any Americans out of line, whatsoever. Not along the Cinque Terre and not at either Pisa or Lucca. In fact, I did not note anyone out-of-line, or drinking too much, or similar stuff, in any of my recent travels. I accept such things can happen, but during my recent excursion I did not notice any such disappointing behavior.

Rick Steve's takes the approach that you will only visit a major European country one time. With that in mind he tries to tailor your visit to focus your attention on only the most important things. I have used his books for 9 years and have found that his tastes do not match mine in most things, but if Rick recommends something as a must see, you ignore it at your peril.
I always use Rick's books as the skeleton of my trip plans, picking out his top choices, and then I flesh out my trips with other sources that are a better match for my tastes.
If you are planning repeat visits to a country you will quickly find that his books are worthless. If you stray from his well blazed trail of long published "secrets" you will be on your own. But his approach is a very good one for a first time visit. Just don't expect to be finding any great travel treasures that no one knows about. There are "As seen in Rick Steves" signs all over Europe.

if you're staying in certain cities, it'd be better to get his Rome, Florence and the Tuscany region and the Venice book.

We used the Italy book, it had nice recommendations on food, hotels and such. They were excellent. Had recommended sights. But the tour guide section found in his Rome book were missing from the Italy book. Because you really can carry around a huge book. If I were to do it again, I would have gotten individual books. But if I were to go to multiple cities, this would definetly be the book to get.

On our trip we went to Rome and Florence.

I have bought about 10-15 guidebooks for an upcoming Mediterranean Cruise and have read each one. This one is my favorite - Rick tells it like it is, I've learned very interesting facts that weren't in any other guidebook. I also appreciate that he reviews from budget to luxury options, so you can choose based on your day's plans - for example, where to eat. Many guidebooks only review sit down restaurants when you might only want a quick panini if you are going to be touring all day. He also offers walking tours of several of the major sites. He lists things to do if you only have a day in one place, which is great for cruisers. There is also a useful appendix. The paper is very thin, so highlighters will bleed through to the opposite page a little bit. However, this book is very compact for the information that it contains. It's 800-900 pages and only about an inch thick. I will actually take this with me and carry it around on my trip.

The book is of average quality when compared to other Italy travel books. It comes with the standard "Rick Steves Advertising" throughout the book. The issue which brought me to return the book was the omission of Sicily from the book. As far as I know, Sicily is still very much a part of Italy and thus should have been included.

I bought the Rick Steves' Italy 2008 book several weeks ago, It has helped alot with my preperation for my trip to Italy. I plan on taking it with me, I know it will be very helpful. I have booked hotel rooms and B&B's for our trip, as well as planning our agenda. I know I could not have planned this trip away from a tour group with out it. AJ

I just love Rick's travel books....having used many others over the years, I find his to be highly readable and entertaining, and full of essential information for the unwary traveller. Top marks once again!

This book has helped me so much in my vacation planning process. I thought I'd have to pay lots of money for big company tours of everything but this book has shown me so many ways to save my cash. It tells you how to book locally run, English speaking tours and reservations rather than paying extra for English services online. It also has easily readable maps of every area of interest in the country, with every sight labelled clearly so you can plan where to start and finish your days. It suggests the level of tourist priority of each sight to help you decide where to spend your time. I cannot convey how much money I will save, using this book enough to you all! I don't know what I would do without this book!

This is my favorite Italy travel guide, and I buy each yearly update when it comes out. The Maps are the best for actually getting around!

Rick Steves' Italy is a wonderful guide book. I bought it while searching for just the right place for our honeymoon, and through this book I found the perfect place - one that I had not seen mentioned on any website or book or travel brochure in my extensive previous searches.

It has a friendly, personal tone to it, and lots of useful tidbits that are missing in some of the other similar books. I am very satisfied with it!

We are still in the planning process of our trip, but so far Rick Steve's book has been great. It is easy to read and organized in a user friendly manner. The size is small enough I can carry it around on our trip and use it as a quick reference. I used his 2006 England book with great success and believe the Italy book is going to be just as useful!

I also bought Frommer's 2008 Italy and am not as pleased with it. In comparison Rick Steve's reads easier. Frommer's reads like a dense textbook. There is almost too much information. Also, Rick Steve's offers complete museum tours so you don't have to buy the audioguides. All the information is in his book and tells you the best path to take. He also does walking tours so you can enjoy a free activity that really highlights a town. Frommer's just lists all the sights and leaves you to sort it out. Frommer's is definitely more inclusive than Rick Steve's; it has more towns, more hotels, more dining, and more sights, but I think it would be way to overwhelming to carry with me.

My plan is to carry Rick Steve's with me on my sightseeing, but to make some additional notes in it on stuff I found in Frommer's. All in all though, I think Rick Steve's is the better book, and if you only want to buy one, I'd buy Rick Steve's.

Rick Steves' Italy 2008 (Rick Steves)

This book is the perfect way to research your vacation.

Once again, I was not disappointed by a Rick Steves book. He gives you everything you need to know to plan a great trip. Lots of details and personal recommendations. We have used his books in the past and have followed his suggestions for where to sleep and eat. He is rarely wrong. I highly recommend this book for any one who is traveling to Europe.

I just got back from Italy and used Rick Steves' Italy 2008 along with Fodor's Essential Italy (which did not cover Naples). I usually use Lonely Planet, but that wasn't available for Italy in a 2008 edition.

While I liked some things about the book, I did not like the fact that the table of contents for a city just lists that city. For example, under Rome in the table of contents is no breakdown. So Rome is listed as being on page 595, and the next entry is Naples which starts on 712. This is not user friendly at all. Who wants to sequentially flip through 117 pages looking for something on Rome, like where to eat, or how to get around? Not I! And the index is not a sufficient solution. Lonely Planet and Fodor's lays out what is in their chapters infinitely better in their respective tables of contents.

Steves' maps in the book were unimpressive when I needed them and were relatively useless to me when I was in Italy. However, I now see that the book had some color maps in the beginning of the book before the table of contents, and none of them are listed in the table of contents, where I jumped to get my info. Now that I see it, it looks like the maps of Florence and Venice are good for what they show, and the map for Rome is too general, not showing any street names in some areas where travel is likely. Only those three city maps appear in the front of the book. There are other maps of varying usefulness throughout the book.

I went to Pisa and only brought Steves' book with me. I gave it to my 16 year old nephew to find us a place to eat. He read the book's recommendations and looked at the book's map showing the location of one of the recommended restaurants, and headed us here and there until I finally took over and discovered that the map was just terrible and didn't include enough information to make it easy. A road that continued indefinitely was drawn as terminating within eyesight of the train station. And an insufficient number of streets were labeled to be of assistance in getting oriented. We walked around for a while and finally ran into the restaurant (which was not open, but that may be because it was the day before Christmas, so that is not an issue here).

One nice thing about the chapter on Naples is that the book tells where to find the information center in the train station, not that it is particularly difficult, but it is very useful. There you can get information and a map--which is definitely needed if you are using Steves' book. Before we got the map, we just used Steves' book to find a pizza place "filled with locals" (i.e., Italians that don't speak English) that the book recommended. There was no related map in the book, just a description that included "a few blocks from the train station" and, depending on what one considers a few blocks, that may have been an accurate description. But we walked what seemed to be more than a few blocks and didn't run into a street that we were supposed to run into. So we started wandering for a while and discovered that it was further than we expected. It was then that we discovered that the book didn't give us a clue as to what to do once we got to this restaurant where no one appeared to speak English and there was a crowd of people outside waiting for something. Then it turned out that if you went in you could get a number--which would have been fine, except I have no idea what 138 sounds like in Italian, and there was no sign giving the numbers. I ran into someone who was using Lonely Planet's Naples 2008, and apparently LP didn't have any info either on what you do once you get to that restaurant, though it also listed that restaurant. Finally we were able to discover that the numbers given out were for those who wanted to sit in the restaurant--and that for carry out you just went in and ordered what you wanted. I sent in my nephews who somehow found someone (a customer) in the restaurant who spoke English and Italian and were finally able to put it together for a carry out pizza.

Another thing I consulted Steves' book for was how to get to the airport from Naples central train station, which is where I originally arrived in Naples. Unfortunately Steves' book doesn't touch on that. Or at least I didn't think so until I just ran into the information just now. In the "Orientation" section of the Naples chapter (of course not listed in the table of contents), there is a section entitled "Arrival in Naples" and discusses arriving by train and by boat, not by jet. But if I had only read everything in the Naples chapter I would have seen that at the end of the chapter was a section entitled "Transportation Connections" which would have given me some information but lacks the clarity to have solved my problem. Even so, it would have been nice if that section name were listed under Naples in the table of contents.

The plus side of this book is the general information. The "Helpful Hints" section, with regard to theft, pickpockets, etc., has very useful information in it. But the book fell apart for me when I needed specific and clear information to accomplish getting somewhere or doing something.

The book is a nice read, but too frustrating to rely on, with too many limited-value maps, and a major hassle to find stuff in.

Not quite a tourists' yellow pages nor quite a piece of literature on Italian history, Rick Steves' Italy 2008 had everything (almost) we wanted and nothing we didn't in order to plan and execute our first Italy trip. My wife and I used this book for preparing our trip and found ourselves carrying it everywhere we went during the trip.

From form factor to content organization, the book reflects a certain level of maturity in writing and editing a travel book. The names of hotel and restaurant owners provided the much needed personal touch and ice breaker; little side notes minimize surprises due to benign mistakes that have a way of ruining good vacations; current information on trains, tours, hours, fees, phone numbers and maps take away the need to collect flyers as soon as you get to a new place. The book seems to have the right mix of information and opinion.

Don't use the book as a guided-tour replacement at museums. Information about Tuscany is minimal and sub-par compared to rest of Italy. Focused tourists (say second time Italy visitors) may not get everything they are looking for. For hotel reservations, we cross-checked the book's suggestions with consumer reviews on TripAdvisor.com and found that to be very useful. Other than that, you should be pretty well covered.

Rick Steves Italy is a great travel guide. When I first received it, I was a bit skeptical due to the fact that it was not as visually appealing as were other books I received on the same subject. Once I began reading the book, I was very much surprised as to how much detail and very important information the book provided. Examples of this are locations of where to be carefull of thieves to the exact street corner. Also, the book gave great detail on restaurants, hotels, and what to see including how to find them, who to ask for, and hours of operation, which helps in planning. Many other travel guides do not go into such detail. In my opinion, I would purchase as an example Fromers guide, and then in addition to that purchase Rick Steves as you will get much more detailed information about all the little things that make a difference in traveling to a city you have never been to.