Blue Guide Rome: Tenth Edition

The best guide available for those who plan to spend a longer time in Rome. It can also be used as a reference source by art historians, architects, and archeologists. Well-structured, well-written. It's printed on high quality paper, which makes it a little too heavy to carry, but this is how such books should be published -- you wouldn't like to part with your Blue Guide at the end of your trip.

Let's be clear. This "guide" book is usually standard textbook fare for the 35 American students chosen to study at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (ICCS) in Rome. Why? Between two covers and kept in your sachel, it offers everything a student would need to know about the Roman ruins that might have been the Temple to Spes or the iconography of a Caravaggio hanging in ... wait, a minute, what church are we in? The Blue Guide series is for those who are looking for a little education amongst their travels. As such, it usually needs supplementing with a more popular, flashy compendium of phone numbers or restaurants. At least now we're clear (but don't begrudge it).

This book divides Rome into 29 walking tours. Each one takes about a day. Maybe you could do two per day in the summer. A few of the tours have a common theme, but most of them just cover a region of the city. The focus is on cultural/historical sites. There's very little about where to eat, sleep, or shop. The author is thorough and provides a lot of insight. The book reads as a folksy continuous narrative by a knowledgeable and perceptive guide. If you have a month in Rome, you could use this book to get a great tour.Many tourists would find this book difficult to use. Suppose you're in Rome for a few days, not nearly enough time to walk all 29 tours. There is no easy way to use this book to prioritize which sites to visit.The Michelin Green Guide has a similar aim and focus, but is much more user-friendly for a short visit. It breaks the city into a smaller number of regional walks. In general it's not quite as thorough as the Blue Guide in terms of what it says about each site and the number of sites it includes. The Michelin Guide has a system of one, two, and three stars to prioritize the sites. This makes it easy for the user to just hit the highlights.

I have been to Italy five times and I swear by the Blue Guides! I was lucky enough to get the Blue Guide Rome for Christmas, from a friend, before the first trip and I have taken that same copy every time since! From hotels to restaurants, from shopping to sightseeing, you'll find all of the important information you need to feel comfortable traveling to Rome, and more importantly, you'll feel confident as you take your daily excursions around the "eternal city". The only other book you ever need to travel around Rome is the Eyewitness Guide Rome. With those two guides, you have all the important information and pictures you'll ever need and more! I highly recommend it.

This is quite simply the most informative, most in-depth guide book currently available on Rome. This book will not pretend to uncover the secret of the best restaurant or pensione in the city. Instead, it gives the reader a well-written synopsis of every important monument in a city so rich in myth and history. For the traveller interested in going beyond colour photos of the Pantheon, this book is indispensible.