A Literary Companion to Rome: Including Ten Walking Tours

preparing for an extended stay in rome , i have read several books...A LITERARY COMPANION TO ROME was by far THE BEST,,,,

Rome has always attracted writers and artists. This book is a series of walking tours around Rome with your guide being the words and letters of two thousand years of visitors. Where else will you find a guide book, for example, recording the impressions of Dante, Henry James and Florence Nightingale of the same buildings? I took this book with me to Rome and carried it with me every day alongside the Fodor's guide. Most travel books tell you where to find the monuments, the churches and the museums - this guide book tells you about the romance of the Eternal City. It is a guide book with a true heart - I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This is an impeccably researched and footnoted book that packs in a ton of information about the major writers (i.e. all of them) who spent time in Rome and wrote about the experience. There's a quote on just about every page from someone famous, from Keats and Dickens and Zola to Florence Nightingale and Bernard Malamud. The author must have spent several years and exhausted any number of chairs researching this book. Once you read this book you will have to track down at least 25 more esoteric tomes following threads that pique your interest. I have not yet tried any of the walks, but just reading this amazing book is enough.