DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Italy: 2019 Paperback – October 2, 2018

I love the DK Eyewitness Travel series. The guidebooks give you everything you need! This one is organized. By regions of Italy: southern Italy, Rome and Lazio, etc. Within each section you get tons of color pictures guiding you to what to do and see, maps to help you get around, information about getting there, phone numbers, hours of operation, and transportation information. I took a trip around Europe in college with the Europe DK book several years ago and that is a good general book, but if you are just going to Italy, this book is detailed and will give you so much information it will be the only book you need!

These books are not the best to travel with but rather to prepare and research places. I consider these book my downtime candy. Love the pictures and descriptions; the wide coverage of many different places. Do wish they had the glossy pages like they used to, but guess it makes them lighter and cheaper to make.

I am a great fan of the eyewitness concept.i It is clear easy to use and has the most fabulous descriptions, outstanding city maps, insider information that adds spice to traveling. The restaurant guide is marvelous and has so many wonderful tips. I am planning a trip to Italy next year and this book is just the right thing informative easy to handle. The cultural background info is outstanding.This will be my 8th trip to Italy and Eyewitness just makes it easy to plan and fit in the most into a short period of time with all the little tit bits to make a holiday really special and memorable.

You can't visit only NY and say you have seen America. The same is true of Italy. We are still in planning stages but this is an excellent guide. It helps to provide reference, context, distances, and excellent in helping overcome the jitters of being in a land where English is not the primary language. The pictures help make everything come alive and the Maps are excellent in helping to plan a walking experience that doesn't double and triple cover the same ground. Highly recommend in planning your tip. Once taken, I will update on how it was when there.

I purchased 3 guidebooks for planning a family trip to Italy. This one is by far the best. It is packed full of useful information including information on small towns and areas that are not the usual tourist destinations. Lots of pictures and even a small section on helpful phrases depending on what the situation is. Lots of listings and ratings of where to stay and eat. I cannot say enough good things about this book. It will be the first one I turn to when we are on are vacation.

Love these books!! The maps, itineraries and other hints are great. I’ve used this brand for several other trips and just love them! Easy to pack and take with you too. Pictures are great and the paper is good quality so it doesn’t rip if it’s windy. I will continue to use this line for future travels.

There are lots of guidebooks out there, so I checked the ratings for an upcoming trip to Italy. The DK Eyewitness guides are among the most highly rated, so I checked one out from the local library to see if it's worth buying; for comparison, I also got copies of the guidebooks by Rick Steves, Lonely Planet, Frommers, Michelin, and at least another couple. The library didn't have a copy of the 2019 DK Eyewitness edition on the shelf, so I went for the 2017 (2018 was also checked out). The quality of the print and figures and binding, the detail, the thoroughness were all excellent in that 2017 volume -- really top-notch and deserving of the high ratings. Figuring the 2019 would be the same but with slight updates as necessary, I bought a copy.The 2019 edition shows what must be cost-cutting measures by the publisher. Whereas the previous years' editions have very sturdy bindings, the pages in my brand new 2019 copy separated from the binding on the very first day. (Some might suggest it's designed to do that -- but if that were true, why the glue to hold the binding to the pages?) The cover on the older versions is a thicker material (still softcover) while the cover on the 2019 copy is cheap, like that on a regular paperback book. (My photos show them side by side.)The differences were so obvious I compared various entries in the 2017 volume (the 2018 is extremely similar in content and construction) with the same content in my 2019 volume. (I can see why the front cover of the 2019 version no longer brags on the number of photos, maps, and illustrations, like the 2017 cover does!)I've attached some photos, focusing on showing the content on a topic in the 2017 copy (on the left) and the same topic in the 2019 copy (on the right) -- but in some cases, the 2017 edition presented something (like maps, one photo of which is upside down... sorry) that is completely lacking in the 2019 edition, so a true side-by-side comparison would not be possible. Here are some details on how they compare:- Total page count is 672 in 2017, 560 in 2019 (yet they are of equal thickness)- Paper is glossy and photos/colors are bright and crisp in 2017, paper is cheaper and colors are comparatively dull in 2019- Rome coverage is 98 pp in 2017, 86 pp in 2019- Florence coverage is 44 pp in 2017, 34 pp in 2019; some specific differences include:Florence coverage in 2017 includes maps covering 6 full pages (see my photos) as well as smaller map insets, 2019 includes 2 full pages of maps plus insetsFlorence coverage in 2017 includes full page "Directory" to accompany maps (shopping, food, markets...), 2019 has a few small sidebars with content on "Drink" or "Eat" or "Shop" (see my photos)Uffizi in Florence is 4 pp (plus additional mentions) in 2017, 2 pp in 2019- Lucca coverage is 4 pp in 2017, 2 pp in 2019So -- my advice would be to get Rick Steves (a guidebook that fully deserves its top rating). If you really like the DK Eyewitness line, I would buy the 2017 or 2018 edition rather than the 2019 edition. The new edition is still good, but it's a 3-star product while the 2017 edition would get a 5 from me.I hope this helps some who, like me, were overwhelmed by all the choices!

If you're looking for a thorough, user-friendly series of travel guide books, look no further! These books are full of practical and interesting, historical information that is so well presented. I've bought these over the years for domestic & international destinations & have never been disappointed. They also provide interesting reading prior to your travels as well.