This is, as made clear by every review, a beautiful book. But on our trip to Italy, we found ourselves using Rick Steves WAY MORE. This book has great pictures and maps, and is good for planning, but it lacks the information Rick Steves gives such as where to park. We would have been completely lost without the Rick Steves book. I will give it this though: We found our hotel from this book and it turned out to be a very nice hotel. Also, this boo weighs a ton so carrying it around was kind of a pain. Get it a a keepsake, but not as a tool for while you are on your trip. Or use it only for the planning stages. If you are looking to get one guidebook, I would get Rick Steves, but I will probably buy both this one and a Rick Steves next time I go to Europe. Happy Travels!!!!!

IF YOU ARE PLANNING A TRIP TO ROME IN THE NEAR FUTURE THEN THIS BOOK AND THE LAMINATED STREETWISE ROME MAP IS LIKE A BIBLE TO YOU. THE PICTURES IN THIS BOOK IS OUTSTANDING. THE AUTHOR BREAKS EACH SECTION DOWN INTO MAPS, DIRECTION AND INFORMATION ON EACH MONUMENTS,CHURCHES, AND PLACES OF INTEREST IN EACH SECTION. THE BOOK ALSO DESCRIBE MOST OF THE HOTELS AND BED-N-BREAKFAST THROUGHTOUT ROME, RESTAURANTS AND SHOPPING. IT ALSO GO INTO DETAIL OF THE SUBWAY SYSTEM. WITH THIS BOOK YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL NOT ONLY HAVE A ROMAN VACATION YOU WILL EXPERIENCE A ROMAN EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME. WHAT REALLY STANDS OUT IS AN INDEPT OF ST. PETER'S BASILICA AND THE COLOSSEUM

Used this on a trip to Rome earlier this month and found the information very helpful and up to date. One aspect of this guide that I enjoyed was the division of Rome into neighborhoods. It was nice to see at a glance what was located in each neighborhood and plan my day accordingly. It also listed some lesser known streets around Campo di Fiori where furniture is restored and antique books are sold. We didn't run into any tourists on those streets! The book had some nice maps, but I would recommend picking up a more detailed one locally in Rome.

Bad news first: this book has the issue of trying to cover too much in too small of a format and page count. As a result, you'll run into some cases where entries are text only. This is not too big of a deal, but sometimes a photo would really help identify a place when you're hemmed in by roads and buildings with little in the way of addresses to guide you. When in Rome, this can be a problem for the uninitiated.

On the other hand, I found the descriptions, diagrams, and photos of the major areas to be more than adequate. I also found on several occasions that the guide pointed out little details (such as the location of Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon) that I would have missed otherwise. The restaurant and refreshment recommendations (save yourself some ground money by drinking from the aqueduct fountains) were right on - not a bad meal in the bunch. Which reminds me...if you like coffee, stop by Tazza d'Oro next to the Pantheon for a really good cup.

To sum up, you cannot go wrong with this guide. Actually, all of the Eyewitness Guides I own - Rome, Florence, Naples, Venice, and Amsterdam - are essentially the same: not exactly perfect, but very good. Other than the minor issue of missing photos on some pages where it would have been useful, I can think of no complaint.

Look no further than any D&K guide for your travel needs, it covers everything and anyting; the guide divides any big area in sections and then suggests which routes, or attractions you must see; it also covers a historical background on them. From history of the city in question as to how to get there, how to use public transportation, basic conversation dialogues a tourist may encounter, places to eat, see, stay, do, it's all there.

To me, there are no better guides than D&K guides. Recommend 100%.

-- update: 'looks like there are 2 guides published by eyewitness; this is *NOT* the "Top 10;" it seems like several of the reviews below are based on that book, not this one. Be careful. --

5 stars? Am I reading the same book?

The book has an average of 4 pictures or graphics per page -- they're small and the text is squeezed around them. Some pages have 10 graphics or pictures. The whole thing seems like a textbook case in how not to design something to be user friendly.

I found the text to be wanting, big time! I've spent a lot of time with Rome guidebooks, and this is clearly the worst of the lot -- sorry I spent the money. Even Fodors and Frommers are better than this. I recommend you take a look at Rick Steves (very plain, but good info) and Access (great idea of putting everything - food, hotel sights, together, block by block, but the seriies isn't what it used to be -- I think the company was sold a few years ago. The best I've found so far is the Rough Guide -- highly recommended

Rome (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

Eyewitness Travel Books are all we use! Very informative and easy to use!
Recommend these books for your travels anywhere!

The Eyewitness series is always superb.

I won;t repeat all the glory heaped on this volume in other reviews, other than to say, apart from the superb cut-aways, sumptuous photography and enagaging text, what Eyewitness unfailingly delivers is USABLE, properly indexed street maps. Too many guidebooke provide sketchy maps where scale turns out to be a mere fantasy, missing minor streets.

Sometimes I find Eyewitness books a BIT too heavy for the baggage allowance, so I wish the maps were included in some sort of detachable form. They really are better than those in other guides, and as usable as a "freestanding" map book.

Just returned from our first trip to Rome. Had a few guidebooks but found that this one was all we needed. It was even worth reading after the trip ended, that's how much information it packs. You must bring this book to Rome.

Having just returned from Rome yesterday, I thought I'd pen a quick review of the DK Eyewitness Guide. In preparation for all my previous travels, the Lonely Planet guides were always the first items I'd pack into my suitcase. However, in the future the DK books have earned the right to that prized spot. Why? In a foreign city, it's very easy to get lost when you are only provided with text based directions and descriptions of buildings and sites. Cities like Rome contain a huge number of destinations that can quickly overwhelm a traveler during the trip planning stage. DK overcomes this problem with it's extensive use of pictures, drawings, and graphical representations of neighborhoods. Don't get me wrong as this is not just a simple picture book of Rome. Excellent descriptions are provided that sketch in the history and context of the many possible tourist waypoints. Thus, readers are provided with the information needed to maximize their trips. This is an excellent guide book which I highly recommend.

If you are traveling to a city and spending only a short time (3 or less days) you need nothing more than an Eyewitness Top 10 Guide. I will never go anywhere without one. It categorizes and boils things down, but the print is large enough to read. If you will be spending longer in your destination (for instance you are studying abroad) you will want a more comprehensive guide. Don't hesitate to buy any of the Eyewitness Top 10 Guides -- I have 3 of them.

IF YOU INTEND TO GO TO ROME THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU ANSWERS ALL YOU COULD ASK

the top 10 guides are the greatest books for traveling. they give the top 10 of everything you would like to know-sights, resturants, hotels. we traveled through europe and book several different types of books and the top 10 were our favorites! some of the info is a little off like the hours of the collsium and the prices of somethings so i would confirm

Lavishly illustrated and easy to follow. Presents a logical division of the city and groups attractions accordingly. Information is accurate and up-to-date. Clearly it's a popular guidebook, as evidenced by the number of Americans visibly carrying it in the city. Pair it with Frommer's Italy and you're covered.

This little book was our bible on a recent trip to Rome. I will always be grateful that DK included San Clemente in their top 10. This amazing little church is like a layer cake of fascinating things to see. The street level is a lovely 12th century church with beautiful floors, columns, and frescoes. Underneath is an excavated 4th century church that includes a frescoe with the first sentence ever written in Italian: "Fili de le pute traite", or "Pull, you sons of whores!" I kid you not. This level also includes the tomb of Saint Cyril, creator of the Cyrillic alphabet, and a wonderful tombstone with a pagan inscription on one side, and on the other, an early Christian inscription -- it was recycled! They have it set up so you can flip it over to see both sides. Finally, the bottom level has ancient ruins, including a Mithraic (pagan) shrine.

The only time the book let us down was its recommendation of Da Augusto, a restaurant in Trastevere. This was their #1 listing under "Cheap Eats" for Trastevere but it was the only unappetizing food we were served in our whole trip.

This book was an ideal handbook for the time I was in Rome. It gave all the necessary information with top tourists spots to make the trip more interesting. Would certainly recommend it for anybody wanting to know everything about the City.

My thanks also to Amazon for their excellent delivery service to Spain. I have used them in the passed and found their service beyond reproach. .

We looked at other guides at the local library before deciding to purchase this one to take on the trip. The numerous gorgeous color pictures alone make it worth the price. We spent an entire day in Rome on a tourist bus that allows you to hop-on/hop-off at various stops and stay as long as you want in 20-minute increments. The Eyewitness Travel Guide was essential to our planning and activities at each stop. The maps are clear with the must-sees clearly identified. The descriptive write-ups are excellent. Who knew that some of the original walls of Diocletian's baths are still standing, partially in a cathedral and partially in one of Rome's best museums? We did, after reading about it in Eyewitness Travel. This guide saves you time and saves you steps as well, both equally important when on an all-day wallking tour. We are sold on these DK Publishing guides and will be purchasing others to use on future trips.

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 this book in college when I went to Rome 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 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 Rome. 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. But, if you're only going to bring one guidebook, I recommend Eyewitness.

The quality of this copy is excellent, and the prompt mailing was a delight. Good job!

I'm writing this in Rome. We are renting a flat in
Trastevere for two weeks and we came prepared with
three guide books.
After the first few days, this was the only one with
which we left the house. It's street level maps and
pictures are simply irreplaceable. Its clever organization
is valuable for sorting through the immense nunmber
of interesting attractions that Rome has to offer and
finding the ones that suit you.

Don't See Rome without it.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the novel bang BANG. ISBN 9781601640005

Planning a trip to Rome - I was looking for a guide book. A friend advised the D*K books - and I ordered several. When I arrived, I started by marking off all the items that I had seen in Rome - and eventually had to change the plan to marking WHAT I HAD NOT SEEN in Rome. The pictures are awesome. The bus routes on the back cover show direction and where the main drags were. I could not get lost. The individual sections - that suggested day trips or walking tours were fabulous. I did all of those. I only wish there was a book for hotels!

My wife and I love the Top 10 series. We always buy a Frommers or Rick Steves book for the trip's planning, but the Top 10 is a must for the trip itself. It'll fit in a pocket (a long one), and will provide quick and easy references to the most important sights, as well as maps and public transportation routes.

the best travel guides you can get ,a lot of information and pictures..one of the travelguides you have an dstay forever,you don't have to buy every year a new edition.

the best travel guides you can get ,a lot of information and pictures..one of the travelguides you have an dstay forever,you don't have to buy every year a new edition.

This book was invaluable to me and my friends as we roamed Rome. It was a very important tool for my visit to Rome. Others in the hotel called my group (3) the energizer bunnies for all we saw in such a short time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lots of good ideas for things to see and do. We stayed in the Piazza Navona area and really appreciated the 9 guided walking tours. The maps and photo illustrations were very helpful.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is going to vacation in Rome.

Future editions might want to reference the Church of Santa Susanna's web site for requesting free tickets for an audience with the Pope.

I recently visited Rome on a cultural trip with my school. This book really did an excellent job of letting me and my group know what to see and about as much information about the sites that we could have taken. While it gives a good overview of the sites, and gives a more in depth analysis of some of the bigger sites, it is not good for thorough study of the city. However, for 95% of the people purchasing such a book, this will not be a problem. I would really recommend this book to anyone who is going to Rome, or just wants to know a little bit more about the sites.

We just returned from Rome and I can honestly say this book was worth every cent. The map in the back is very detailed, much more so than other books and hotel maps. The museum diagrams and photos were also very useful. The back flap of the cover works as a fantastic and useful bookmark. Good phrases and pronunciations, good symbols, metro and bus information was very helpful, and the photos were excellent. You see tourists of every corner of the world carrying this book. Only negative is that there wasn't information on how organized tours really aren't worth the money, unlike I found in a Rick Steves book after the fact. (By the way - if you are going to Rome, avoid almost every organized tour as they rush you through and you don't get to see everything - especially at the Vatican). I will buy from the same publisher next time I travel!!

Pro: I am a visual kind of guy and 3D cross section pictures and diagrams helps a lot. Nice colorful pictures and nice recommended neighborhood walks. At home, it also serves as a nice coffee table book.

Con: The glossy heavy stock papers, though nice to look at is a bit heavy to put in your pockets and walk around with it. Also the hotel and restaurant sectiion needs a bit of bulking up.

The Eyewitness Series from DK (not just Rome) is head and shoulders above any other travel guides. Unbelievable amount of details, street maps, schematics, and generally useful (and usable) information. Excellent! You won't use any other travel guides once you've used these.

This is an excellent book to walk around with in Rome and it is also a very popular choice. During my recent trip to Rome, I saw many other tourists walking around with this book in their hands. The book is small enough to fit easily in a woman's purse and has a very good and detailed map of the historic centre of the city. There is also a decent but less detailed and less useful map of greater Rome.

Like the other "Top 10" travel guides, "Top 10 Rome" is in the format of top ten lists with related narrative and information for things like tourist sites, hotels, restaurants, etc. The list of top ten tourist sites is followed by lists of the top ten things about each site, and there are maps/diagrams of the Vatican, the Forum, Palatine Hill, and several museums. There are also top ten lists of sites, restaurants, shopping, bars and nightlife for different sections of the city with small maps showing where each place is.

There are top ten lists of "Ancient Sites," "Museums and Galleries," "Squares and Fountains," "Villas and Palaces," "Romantic Spots," "Green Spaces," and "Rome for Children." There are top ten lists for things such as "General Information," "Getting to Rome, "Getting Around Rome," "Eating and Drinking Tips," "Rome on a Budget" and "Things to Avoid." There are eight top ten lists of hotels/places to stay.

There is a top ten list of churches but in Rome you would really need a top twenty-five list of churches. You don't have to worry much about this, however, as most other churches of interest that are not included in the "Top 10 churches" list are included in the top ten lists of sites for different areas of the city, with one noteworthy exception: The book does not mention Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, founded in AD 320, where pieces of Christ's cross and an inscription by Pontius Pilate are on display.

Excellent travel guide with accurate pictures, interesting historical stories and tidbits, as well as useful walking tours of Rome. Wife & I used this for our one week honeymoon in Rome. Didn't need a tour guide or anything else. Would definitely use this again for return visits.

I travel to Rome often these days, as I make part of my living through writing about the Eternal City on my web site. However, on my first visit, with my Wife on a past anniversary, we used this guide as our only source of information during a four day trip. There is a tremendous amount of detail, all set out in a logical order, and just enough of the history and background to allow your visit to make sense on the ground. We tried out many of the restaurant and shopping recommendations, and found them all to be first class. A thoroughly recommended read!

I suppose if you want more information regarding hotels and restaurants then some of the more exhaustive guides would be your choice, but the DK guidebooks offer so much more in the way of insights and illustrations into the cities and countries they cover. Rome is no exception. I suppliment these books by turning to the web for more timely information regarding hotels, restaurants and transportation, but what I want most in a guidebook is pertinent information regarding the sites I want to see, such as the Vatican Museum, Piazza Navona and the Spanish Steps. DK does it one better by providing plenty of beautiful illustrations to give you a visual sense of the city as well and providing interesting historical asides. The only guides that compare are the Knopf illustrated guides but they are often out of date and can't be relied on for key information.

Has very good "technical" information.

Lacks a bit on history and needs minor updates on buses and subway info.

you should buy this book. We spent four days there and used this book to navigate around the city. What this book doesn't tell you is that Rome (and it's monuments!!!) is covered in grafitti and trash... for that I only give this book four stars.

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 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 so many attractions, museums, and churches to see in Rome, these illustrations become priceless. Not only did they help me maximize my time on site, but they also helped me to pick and choose between the ones I had time to see, and the ones that would have to wait for the next visit.

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.

This was my first Top 10 book, and I will buy them from now on. Seeing a city like Rome is overwhelming because there's so much to do there. Top 10 Rome helps you prioritize. It includes helpful maps and insightful excerpts about the society and history of the place. You should get it.

Take this book along! Nobody could ask for a better travel guide!

This is the book I took into the streets with me in Rome. It has the best maps, very thorough descriptions and gorgeous pictures/architectural diagrams of the major and minor sites. If there was additional information I had gleaned from another book, I would post-it-note it into this one. At 432 pages it is a little heavier than the normal DK Guide, too thick to fit into a back pocket, but the one guide to take with you during your explorations. Excellent for pre-trip planning and hotel selection. A very practical, attractive, useable book.

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.

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.

Beautiful book for getting excited about going or to remember your trip by when you return. Also bought Rick Steves guide book which I found more practical with common sense advice and better sized for carrying around Rome without a purse or back back. Before and after Rome trip I used this book. In Rome I used Rick Steves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. : )

I've used the Eyewitness Travel Guide to London and really liked it so I gave this one a try. I was not disappointed. You must buy the Rome Guide instead of the whole Italy because you'll definitely want to take it out with you everyday. With the guide I was able to do my whole trip just taking the bus. With the bus pass I was able to hop on and off, very important in Rome because there's something to see around every corner. The guide is easy to use. It's great for people who likes to have a day to day plan but also good for those who just likes to see as you go. The only thing missing is a fold out map. It's a little difficult to use the map when it's divided into so many pages.

I checked out several guides at the library before ordering this one to take on my trip. It is very nicely organized, with lots of pictures and descriptions. Very easy to skim through and pick out places to see, and to map getting there. It's also a convenient size to fit in backpack or purse -- and I saw many tourists hiking about with the same tourbook. I highly recommend this one.