We used this guide and found it to be excellent. We had several guides but this was the most complete and easy to use.

Yeah, doesn't everyone? There is so much in this book outside of Florence and I really wanted to make the trek into the Tuscan hills around the city, especially to Pisa and Siena. But alas, I was trapped in Florence...and what a prison it was! Everyone should find themselves thus abused at some point in their life, I believe.

This DK guide made the punishment a lot easier to endure, saving me time and headache by thoroughly breaking down specific areas of the city in detailed maps. From Palazzo and Ponte Vecchio, to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (il Duomo), and on to Brancacci Chapel and Santa Croce and everything in between. This guide gave me detailed information on each of the sites and helped enrich the experience. The exploded diagrams cover the finer points, giving the reader recognizable visual elements to look for along the way. This is so much better than words alone.

Overall, I highly recommend this book...and the city itself. Florence is a place like no other!

We enjoyed this guidebook on our recent trip to Florence. It was comprehensive, easy to use, and fun to read. This publisher also offers a companion map and mini-guide book to use on the go.

The travel sections of most bookstores, particularly the larger ones, are awash in books about Italy, and in particular, the region of Tuscany. This is clearly too much of a good thing; take 10 of these books----and there must be closer to 20 of them----and you will find much duplication. How is a traveler, particularly the first-time traveler to central Italy, to know which guides are helpful and which merely rehash information that has been available for many years? One of the problems is that many of the guides issue a new edition each year in an apparent attempt to render last year's guide obsolete. Nonsense! I have some travel guides that are 15 years old and are still valuable. Keep in mind that the Etruscans were in Tuscany well over 2,000 years ago; their monuments and culture is not going to change much between 2007 and 2008.

In short, this book serves a purpose but so do many others with similar titles.

My husband and I are free spirit travelers that like to keep the planning somewhat spontaneous, yet still have enough planning to get the most from the experience. We enjoyed this book for providing enough history and background to provide context for the experiene. Plus this book (along with the help of a great GPS system) was great for mapping and planning the day. I actually used a friend's books for our trip and thought they were so great that I bought a copy for myself as a keepsake for when we returned.

I have become such a fan of the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides that I never use anything else anymore. They are full of historical information, maps, area by area tips for sightseeing and guides to hotels, restaurants and shopping. They give you good information about traveling to and from, as well as, in and around your destination cities. My favorite thing about these guides is that they give you photograps of the different sites they recommend. I have had occassion to see a photograph of something I hadn't intended to see, been intrigued, and gone out of my way to see it. I've never been disappointed with these guides and this one for Florence and Tuscany are no exception. A great feature of these guides is that they also give maps of the inside of larger buildings such as cathedrals. This is very important in places that have specifically interesting or important pieces of artwork you'd like to see.



If you are traveling with a tour group it is especially nice that you can see what might be available to see in a smaller place you stop for only a few hours. The guide will lead you right to it and you don't waste your time wandering (unless wandering is what you love). Definitely study these guides before you leave. You're trip will be enriched.



Another thing I love about these guides that I've never seen in other guides is a list, complete with pictures, of the different foods that are native to where you're traveling and what the dish is made from. As I am not a particularly adventurous eater, this is very comforting!Florence and Tuscany (Eyewitness Travel Guides)



If you are an armchair traveler these are also great. With the photos and facts you will feel as if you've traveled to your dream destination.

I have become such a fan of the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides that I never use anything else anymore. They are full of historical information, maps, area by area tips for sightseeing and guides to hotels, restaurants and shopping. They give you good information about traveling to and from, as well as, in and around your destination cities. My favorite thing about these guides is that they give you photograps of the different sites they recommend. I have had occassion to see a photograph of something I hadn't intended to see, been intrigued, and gone out of my way to see it. I've never been disappointed with these guides and this one for Florence and Tuscany are no exception. A great feature of these guides is that they also give maps of the inside of larger buildings such as cathedrals. This is very important in places that have specifically interesting or important pieces of artwork you'd like to see.

If you are traveling with a tour group it is especially nice that you can see what might be available to see in a smaller place you stop for only a few hours. The guide will lead you right to it and you don't waste your time wandering (unless wandering is what you love). Definitely study these guides before you leave. You're trip will be enriched.

Another thing I love about these guides that I've never seen in other guides is a list, complete with pictures, of the different foods that are native to where you're traveling and what the dish is made from. As I am not a particularly adventurous eater, this is very comforting!Florence and Tuscany (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

If you are an armchair traveler these are also great. With the photos and facts you will feel as if you've traveled to your dream destination.

There is no such thing as the perfect guidebook, but after 13 years of using them I've been most impressed by the Eyewitness series. I used the Rome book in college when I went there for 6 weeks, the London book when I lived in the UK for two years, and I bought the latest edition of the Rome and Florence/Tuscany books this year for my Italian honeymoon. I also brought along Rick Steves and Blue Guide to field-test them, but I used Eyewitness the most by a long shot. Rick Steves is very good for practical travel tips, but little else. Blue Guides are very good for historical/artistic/architectural detail, but they can be cumbersome and aren't the easiest to use while traveling. I made a point to notice which guides other travelers were using around Italy, and I saw Eyewitness guides far more than any other, carried in an amazing variety of language editions by travelers from all over the world.

Eyewitness guides are colorful, filled with photos, easy to carry, user-friendly, and they have great city maps. They provide a comprehensive overview that lets you decide what you want to see. They're also very durable and hold up extremely well in the rain. Foldout covers on front and back provide very handy bookmarks. They have their downsides too, of course: the restaurant and hotel recommendations are hit and miss (as with most guidebooks), the books are not always updated annually, and the short Italian dictionary in the back is all but useless.

This book will guide you to the places you most want to see in and around Florence. It won't tell you a lot about them when you get there, but for many travelers it's more than enough. I like to have more historical, artistic and architectural detail handy when I travel to a place like Italy, so I also travel with the much more detailed Blue Guides. If you're only going to bring one guidebook, I recommend Eyewitness.

I recently used this guide during a six-day stay in Florence, with side trips to Prato and Siena. The maps were wonderful, the descriptions helpful, the hints on using buses, trains, electricity, tipping, etc. were practical. The layout diagrams of the top sites showing the interiors of buildings and floorplans seem to be a unique feature of the Eyewitness Guide series -- they are a wonderful to orient oneself within a building. The guide greatly enhanced my trip. And, after my trip, it's been helpful in getting my images in order and identified.

Having read both and used as a planning guides for an Fall 2007 trip, I think this one is a bit better. There are some other great reviewers here to read, and I can only add having both will not hurt you in your preparations for Florence and the Tuscany area. I do beleive Rick Steve's is better on the restaurant reviews. I also recommend using both books to do internet searches of hotels and restaurants. You'd be surprised how many establishments have websites so you can see if you want to stay or eat at certain places.

My family and I just returned from Tuscany and found this guide to be invaluable. The maps, diagrams and pictures are top notch. Although some of the historical and artistic themes are only covered briefly (e.g. the Medici family, Dante, Mannerist painting, etc) it is sufficient to give you a general sense of the key themes and players. The rest is up to you.

What was also particularly useful was the restuarant guide and off the beaten track locations such as Saturnia. Even though I'm moderately fluent in Italian the mini phrase book at the back came in handy. I couldn't remember how to say duck in Italian (l'anatra), and was surprised to find it in the guide.

If you're even remotely considering buying a Florence and/or Tuscany guide, look no further, this is the guide for you.

The guide was incredible useful in Florence. There is so much to see that without the guide we would have misssed a lot. The walking tours are a pleasure.
Strongly recommended

The guide was incredible useful in Florence. There is so much to see that without the guide we would have misssed a lot. The walking tours are a pleasure.
Strongly recommended

What a fabulous guide! So much detail, so well organized and presented. If you have this guide and Rick Steves's guide to the language, you are very well prepared. Only a couple comments: perhaps due to construction, the entrance to Il Duomo in Florence is on the opposite side of what this guide shows. And there isn't much detail on the restaurants.

What a fabulous guide! So much detail, so well organized and presented. If you have this guide and Rick Steves's guide to the language, you are very well prepared. Only a couple comments: perhaps due to construction, the entrance to Il Duomo in Florence is on the opposite side of what this guide shows. And there isn't much detail on the restaurants.

Packed with lots of great information and images about the sites to see in Florence. The organization of the book was a little confusing, but it was a very helpful resource to have on our trip.

Packed with lots of great information and images about the sites to see in Florence. The organization of the book was a little confusing, but it was a very helpful resource to have on our trip.

When I realized my old DK was 2 versions old, I had to get the newest one. In my 4 trips to Italy, the DK travel books and Streetwise have been invaluable. They help you to prioritize your time. The books actually show you lay-outs of museums, parks and such. On more than one occassion, this has saved me exiting a museum short of seeing everything I wanted to see, because I could see in the book that there was another wing or floor. The excellent pictures also provide a quick memory book of your trip once you get home.

Both my husband and I have enjoyed this book. It shows in such detail and information on places we will see on our trip to this region this year. Thank you for making these travel books available through your website.

I guess this handy book contains everything a tourist needs to know about visiting Florence and Tuscany, but --as is usually the case-- you will ultimately be better off just diving in and discovering the region on your own.

Still, it is a prettily and well edited resource guide that will be fun to read when planning and anticipating your travel.

This book was exactly what we needed to help plan our days while in Florence. The map/photos and information is great and really helps to know where stuff is and what to do there. We used it in conjunction with the rain-proof Rough Map to Florence/Sienna. It was a perfect combination.

Traveling without doing any research is a recipe for sub-par trips and missing many things that you would want to see if only you knew where to look. The problem with most travel guides, though, is that they are great sources of information on hotels, restaurants, and other attractions but they have few pictures if any. Yet, when you travel to a region such as Tuscany, there are many locales that have great visual appeal. How can you possibly select or prioritize among them without seeing pictures?

This is where the Eyewitness Travel Guides come in handy. This guide provides a fairly comprehensive package of details about hotels etc., but it also has many beautiful photos to help you see which sights are most worth visiting. The book is an excellent guide and can definitely help you decide what you want to see while visiting Tuscany and Florence.

QUICK INFORMATION:

The DK Eyewitness travel guide is firstly what it says it is - A Guide. It is there to help you with advice to resource you with useful information for your forth-coming travels. I have especially used these while travelling in Italy and always found it offers visitors a detailed guide for today.

These guides I would suggest are for the following - if you are combining a holiday with a spot of sightseeing, require a history element, maybe taking off and having your own little adventure, wish to par take in travelling in your own style by rented car, train or by bus this is the guide for you. I do not advise this pitcurticlar guidebook for backpackers or people travelling off the beaten track. Backpackers may require a bit more in-depth information.

Second quick checkpoint when purchasing an edition of this book, please check that you have the most recent and up to date version.

A necessary factor of any travel guide is to require the latest information most editions of these books are usually updated yearly. Although the 2005 edition would work very well for holiday makers this year, the latest edition 2006 will give you extra hotels listings, restaurants and improved maps with the layout of the book worked upon and updated.

BOOK OVERVIEW:

This book is extremely well planned and laid out, even showing you how to use this book guide. Areas of Florence and Tuscany are all identified and nicely colour coded, It covers in each section History, Art, Architecture, Culture, as well as Churches, Landscapes, Museums, Shopping, Markets, Villages, Festivals, and great days out. It starts with an introduction to Florence and Tuscany through the year, followed by an understanding of Florence and Tuscany area by area. It comes with a survival guide of practical information for each area shown, supplied with a map and street finder.

Each section of this book has then been broken down; sections and chapters with smaller surrounding areas for the following, Florence, City centre east, North and West, Oltrarno, Western Tuscany, North, East, South and Central Tuscany. An area of Florence or Tuscany has being mapped out and numbered for the items of tourist interest, where to go, location, places to see or an object being described with a picture. It also shows interior and exterior of buildings with photographs and illustrated design. It's not just reading its showing you. As in all these DK travel books it has a visitors checklist which I think is a great idea giving you information such as opening and closing times of shops, Museums, ect. Tips are given throughout to make things easy for you.

Clear Information on Chemists/pharmacy/hospitals can be found in the Survival Guide section an importance in any country, also many tips on being safe. Information on all places range, more pages are written depending on history, sights and things to do. For the not so in-depth sections I always reverted back to my bigger source when travelling around word of mouth, speaking to the locals or fellow holiday makers. Road maps, motorways are all shown and guided with direction. Once again driving in any Italian city can be tricky mostly gridlocked. A Travel section will help you with best places to pick up car rental, train, buses also airport locations. Guidebooks in general do not list prices because they frequently change; some will only estimate how much, but many handy websites can be found from key words so you yourself can go direct to information.

I love the Travellers Needs section, hotels, restaurants, where to locate food and wine; the expensive and inexpensive. How to find the most delicate of pastries or just tracking down all that glorious Italian ice cream, pure indulgence. My favourite ladies shopping, female retail therapy comes with a directory also where the markets are and what time of year you can pick up a bargain. It also tells you how to book and obtain tickets for day/nightly entertainment. As always in any city be vigilant keep those wallets/purses in a safe place.

Lastly the Italian phase page please give it a go, it brings a smile to any Italians face that you made an attempt and an even bigger smile at an attempt gone wrong.

MY TIPS:

Read this book in advance before travelling; use this book with the internet. For example, this time around I wanted to do the tour of the Uffizi Gallery, although this time I was there in Febuary queuing was lighter, one thing I learned from a previous Summer trip the queues can get long in Florence and if you're short on time queues are just not needed. This information is exceptional for the one dayer in Florence, just type in via the internet Uffizi Gallery a web site is shown where you can book online for one or many tickets, with or without a tour guide. Groups can book up to 15-20 people with guide. The difference when you arrive no queuing (so if your in the big queue your in the wrong queue) you go straight in after showing you've already pre paid pick up your guide and off you go. I would personally recommend a tour guide, Go for the 9am tour if possible it's two and half hours long. Its not to be missed, Uffizi Gallery holds one of the most important art collections including classical sculpture. Four Centuries of history makes the Uffizi Gallery the oldest in the world. If there's something that you feel you need to see to make your trip special always go to great lengths to gather information to make sure you don't miss out.

For Hotels, Bed & Breakfast or other lodgings this book supplies you with information but just go one step further, look up the Trip Advisor website, it gives you a personal review from people who have stayed at certain hotels, B&B listed from this book, management of these establishments sometimes respond on the site if a complaint is made. It gives real insight.

This book I found to be a wonderful source of information, the history element is my keen interest. These books come highly recommend from myself. Good Luck, stay sharp in any city, have a fantastic time.

The New DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Florence and Tuscany was released in the UK January 2006 by Christopher Catling, due to be released on Amazon.com on March 20th 2006. I Will Repost my review to the correct Edition 2006 when this becomes avalible.In the mean time I've posted this early for People going before March 20th or for anyone that may require additional information.

A.Bowhill

This book is the premier publication for travel guides, however, do not buy if you have bought the Italy Eyewitness Guide. It does not add enough additional value to justify the acquistion.

Buongiorno! I recommend all the Eyewitness Travel guide books to anyone who is planning a trip to Italy. I show this book to people who sign up for my tours for the pictures and the useful information that they may need to know before going. I love the quality of the images and being from Italy (Florence to be exact), I was surprised to see how in-depth and easy to find the information was, while at the same time, keeping it concise and essential. It's not super-light, and that's why I didn't give it 5 stars, because it's kind of heavy to carry around if you're out an about the hills of Tuscany. If you'd like a pocket book to take with you as you go on your day trips, get "Top 10 Tuscany", which is also by DK Eyewitness travel. If you'd like to get other recommendations on traveling to Tuscany, contact me: nada@nadasitaly.com

I can think of no better book to guide you around the hill country of Tuscany than this DK guide. It not only provides in depth views of the great landmarks of Florence such as the Ufizzi and the Duomo but highlights special Tuscan towns like San Gimignano and Arezzo. There is fairly extensive coverage of Siena, Pisa and Lucca as well. What makes this book stand out over others is that it is so handsomely illustrated with marvelous cutaway sections of the Duomo and Baptistry in Florence as well as three dimensional views of the historic quarters. There is an interesting history section as well as useful information when it comes to planes, trains and automobiles. This guide also highlights some of the Etruscan ancient sites. Best to double check the museum times, and follow the DK advice of booking tickets in advance, as it will save you long waits at the galleries. Whether you are sampling Tuscany for its wines or tracking down the great artists and writers, you will be glad you have this book to guide you on your journey of discovery.

These books are so helpful! We plan out entire trips according to them. We are going to Florence next week and have already planned out our itinerary according to this book! Last year we used the Prague book from this serious, and it was extremely helpful! This book is a must for travelers. Small but a bit heavy as it is packed with beautiful pictures and info.

My work has provided me with the opportunity to travel a good bit. I am the type of person who wants to get a working background for my destinations, both in terms of history and geographic layout. Because I work, I don't have a great deal of time to spend reading and studying different, often lengthy, travel guides before or during my trips.

Because these guides are concise, beautifully illustrated, relatively compact, and impeccably organized, I cannot recommend highly enough the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides! The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide is THE guide I buy for every destination. Not only do I get a quick history and background of the destination, but I also will be provided with a visual guide to everything. The visual detail is really what sets the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides apart.

The street maps of common destination points are drawn in dimensional detail so you will visually recognize when you "get there." This is particularly helpful when you don't speak the native language. The explanation of addresses in Florence turned out to be awfully helpful to me.

The regional maps are colorful and concise. However, the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide really shows its stuff with the drawings associated with attractions such as museums and churches. Their presentation of building layouts allow the traveler who is short on time to quickly see the best of the attraction within the time the traveler has to spend. With Florence as a destination, these museum and church illustrations are priceless!

Each DK Eyewitness Travel Guide has a good summary section in the back with practical information about where to eat, where to sleep, what to do, and how to get around.

While I may supplement the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide with others for a more detailed travel guide, the other guide is only more to read, not more to see. Buy the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide first for any destination.

My husband and I were on a one-week whirlwind tour with a touring company. We purchased this right before hitting Florence and Tuscany and it was an invaluable resource. The photos are beautiful and the information provided was just enough to get us excited (and knowledgeable) about what we were seeing. The Street-by-Street guides were particularly helpful since we were given a small black and white map by the touring company which didn't point out anything useful! I am using the book as a reference as I scrapbook the trip, and it will be a wonderful souvenir in the years to come. Thank you!

If you plan to buy only one travel guide to Florence and Tuscany, this is the one. It provides an overview of all aspects of Florentine life and then proceeds to discuss the attractions in different sections of the city, complete with street maps. Major attractions are given several page spreads with open building diagrams from which you can determine where a particular painting or sculpture is within a building.

Unfortunately, the coverage tends to be uneven. For instance, very little is said about the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the museum that houses Michelangelo's second Pieta, Donatello's Mary Magdalene, and other significant sculpture by Donatello, della Robbia and others.

The listings of hotels and restaurants are limited, and for our purposes, were of little use. Better to use a current version of a guide dedicated to those subjects.

The best museum guides are the small inexpensive (about 8 euro) ones that are available at the major museums. These exist for the Academy, the Bargello, San Lorenzo, San Marco and the Museum of Archaeology. There is also an excellent, slightly larger guide to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo that can be bought in their bookshop (You do not have to enter the museum to use the bookshop, which has a fine collection of books on Florence). We bought an entertaining and useful book there (Alta Mcadam's "Americans in Florence" [ISBN 88-09-013157-1]), which offers a series of walks with recommendations for sights restaurants, and hotels along the way. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available in the U.S., although some of the same information may be available in the Guinti Guide to Florence.

Also consider purchasing the Knopf Guide to Florence, which is less functional but has beautiful pictures of the city.

The best map is the Knopf CityMap. Compact and very useful.

Recommendation: Our most impressive and beautiful experience in Florence was attending the afternoon vespers in the crypt of San Miniato, at which the Benedictine monks sing Gregorian chants. It's as if you were taken back 1,000 years. Truly lovely. Every afternoon at 4:30.

One last thing: Be sure to check the hours of the places you plan to visit. Many of the museums (e.g., the Bargello and the Medici Library) are only open during very short hours and only on certain days.

This book, I bought for its Tuscany part, since my family and I went to Tuscany (but not Florence) on vacation, so I was a bit dissapointed to discover that Florence takes up as much coverage than the rest of Tuscany. Given the pattern of other Eyewitness guides, this shouldn't have surprised me, but I had forgotten.

That said, I still find the format of the Eyewitness Travel Guides good for setting expectations. Using the book, it's a fairly easy task to skim through the book to decide what would be interesting to see.

The visual focus of the book is strongest when focus is on arcitecture - I found the introductions to Tuscan arcitecture quite helpful, and as usual, cutaway diagrams of churches, etc. are most helpful. For this book, howevever, I found disappointingly few of these, and too many regular (albeit nice) fotos.

The focus is heavily on culture, even though the landscape of Tuscany is also very nice. As an example can be mentioned Monte Amiata, which can be seen from all over Southern Tuscany, but is only mentioned in passing once in the entire book.

This guide has a good overview of Tuscany with lovely pictures, and its restaurant reviews are quite reliable. It is good background reading before a visit to the area, although because of its scope of coverage it is brief on details about most sights. However, I found it a little difficult to use in the field, mostly due to the placement of the maps and to the organization of the information on Florence. I would give it four stars but downgraded it to 3 for one major flaw. The guide recommends a walk to San Miniato al Monte and describes the route as dotted with cafes. There was not a single cafe along the way to the church and this error was remarkable -- beware of making this hike without several bottles of water!