Umbria

If you want a book with photos, choose an EyeWitness guidebook. If you want to reseach places to stay, purchase a Karen Brown guide to inns or hotels. But for in-depth information that focuses on the history, culture and arts in Umbria, Blue Guide Umbria is the best there is. I lived in Perugia (the largest town in Umbria) for three months during which I traveled extensively throughout the region. The Blue Guide for Umbria was by far the most useful and most accurate of the 4 guide books I brought with me. Frankly,I should have left the rest at home. While I wouldn't recommend Blue Guide Umbria for researching hotels, you can't go wrong with the ones listed. The restaurant lists are more than adequate and cover all price ranges. Most importantly, however, the hotels and restaurants listed are very appropriately categorized and rated (both in terms of cost and quality). What I liked most about Blue Guide Umbria was being able to tell which towns, churches, museums and historical sites would really interest me and which would not. Most guides make every site and town seem spectacular. The Blue Guide Umbria was more discerning than most. The book also contained fairly complete and accurate information about the layout and content of churches and museums. For the traveler who wants to pack light but be well-informed, Blue Guide Umbria is a treasure.

The Blue Guide is the most exhaustive guide on art in Umbria I came across. Usually this fairly small - and touristically not yet overexploited - region is treated together with Tuscany and/or Le Marches. So if you really want to focus your trip only on Umbria and art is your main concern, this is the guide to take along.It must be said that visually the guide has not much to offer : the lay-out is conservative and illustrations are kept to a minimum (no pictures, shaky pen drawings only).The city maps are very helpful. The depth of information offered is however staggering - and to a certain extent misleading : even the most insignificant borough gets jubilant descriptions of frescoes, oil paintings, sculptures and other works of art that are on display. Often however the actual quality of the art collections shown a.o. in the local pinacothecas of the smaller hill villages is rather disappointing and not really worth the trip unless you are fanatically obsessed with medieval and early renaissance art and want to see every scrap that is available.What is really lacking in these guides is a rating system that makes Michelin Guides so useful for planning excursions, because it would allow you to weigh more or less objectively the different options that are open to you. The Michelin Guide for Italy is however totally insufficient if you want to focus your visit exclusively on Umbria and want to see more than Assisi, Orvieto and Perugia.

I just returned from a trip to Italy which included 4 days in Umbria and 8 days in Tuscany. I found the Blue Guides for both regions outstanding. Not surprisingly, both are quite worn (the best sign of a useful guidebook). What makes this guidebook stand out is the incredible breadth of coverage of all tourist sites in Umbria. It is hard to believe that so much information is packed into such a small book. Each chapter represents a tour which covers either a town and its vicinity or a driving circuit. Within each tour, every conceivable tourist destination is identified, including small towns, churches, squares, public buildings, museums, archeological sites, etc. For significant museums and churches, the guide directs you through the works in a logical order. For the most part, individual works/objects are listed but not discussed, but notable works are identified with asterisks. Particularly remarkable works, such as Cathedrals and great fresco cycles, are discussed in more detail. If you are interested in Italian art, architecture, and ancient history, then this book tells you where to find it in Umbria, and provides brief descriptions. The guidebook does not teach you the history of art and architecture in Umbria, nor should it. For this, you will need to do some additional reading. Fine maps and a brief history are provided for each significant town. Parking advise is provided for most towns, and I strongly suggest you follow this advise. (I learned this the hard way.) Also pay close attention to the opening hours, which are quite accurate. The guide's hotel and restaurant recommendations seem quite good; they overlap significantly with the Michelin Red Guide and Frommers. Unfortunately, no descriptions or prices are provided, so most people will want another guidebook for this use. Some of the site closure information was out of date, but I expect this to be updated with the 2000 edition.

The Blue Guide series focuses on art. If you are looking for hotels, shopping, restaurants, or for entertaining reading, rely on something else. If you're looking for history and art, both the well-known and the quietly tucked away, a list of hours and days open for musuems, holidays (often to be avoided!), as well as addresses of libraries and research institutions, the Blue Guides are for you. They cover almost every artwork in the various regions, and do so accurately. The books guide the reader systematically through churches and museums and include accurate floor plans. Towns are grouped into touring areas, as are neighborhoods in the large cities. Town maps, even for little places, are precise and plentiful. City maps are equally precise and inclusive, even for Venice and Siena,but they are split among several pages, which can make them a harder to follow --- a minor flaw. I use Blue Guides as a textbook for my college students, and I never go to Italy without at least one!