Italy (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive, engrossing and just plain fun-to-read guidebook than the Eyewitness Travel Guide: Italy. Spilling over with all sorts of useful information for the traveler, you'll find three-dimensional drawings, floor plans, and detailed neighborhood maps, as well as timelines, charts, and even popular Rome bus routes. Broken into several parts--"Introducing Italy," "Region by Region" (with northern, central, and southern chapters as well as impressive sections covering Rome and Florence), "Traveler's Needs," and "Survival Guide"--the guide provides the reader with a complete picture of the country. Readers will especially love the hundreds of color photos of everything from Rome's famous piazzas, Navona and di Spagna, to the red-roofed villages of Tuscany to room-by-room descriptions of the Uffizi Gallery and the Vatican museums (where you'll find the newly restored Sistine Chapel). There are also listings for the best pasta restaurants, wine bars, chic shopping streets, and some of the world's most romantic hotels. --Jill Fergus