Rick Steves Italy (Rick Steves Travel Guide)

I’ve been a fan of the Rick Steves Europe series for years — we’ve used his guides for Vienna and Prague with great success. When I saw the new Italy edition was being released in June, I pre-ordered it right away for our August trip. It was worth the wait. The content is fresh, accurate, and filled with the kind of practical details that make a real difference when traveling.This book covers not just sightseeing but also the “how” of travel — where it’s worth renting a car and where it’s better to avoid the expense, tips that save both time and money. The background information adds depth to each stop, and the companion audio app was a wonderful bonus. We used it for self-guided tours, which helped us create a custom itinerary, focusing on the places that interested us most and skipping those that didn’t.One small suggestion: Rick has an excellent audio tour of the Ghetto Ebraico (Jewish Ghetto of Rome), which we really enjoyed, but I noticed there wasn’t much written coverage of this site in the book itself. It would be great to see more detail added in future editions.Overall, this guide is indispensable for planning and traveling in Italy. Clear, practical, and reliable — I wouldn’t want to travel without it.P.S. I noticed that some commented about the binding. First of all, I did not experience any problem with it, even though I was using it much before the trip as well as taking it everywhere on the trip. Secondly, I believe that the binding quality is actually part of the design. In the beginning of the book, Steve recommends breaking each city in the book (ordered and divided by area/city) apart from the binding to make it easier to travel with (He actually writes to tear the book apart) , so as we say in IT, it's not a bug, it's a feature :-)

My trip to Italy is still two months away, but I have devoured Rick Steves’ travel book. For each city I’ll be visiting I have highlighted and taken notes. He offers so many helpful suggestions of where and when to go. The detailed maps are very helpful in our planning. As per Rick’s suggestion, I will be cutting up the book and taking the sections I’ll need to Italy with me. I’ll also be downloading his free audio tours that are noted in the book. I won’t travel anywhere again without checking out if Rick Steves has a book for it!

Rick Steves guides never disappoint. This has excellent coverage and was well worth the investment before our trip

Another amazing travel book by the great Rick Steves! It does say you can tear out parts of the book, which other reviewers have mentioned.

The guide book is well written and covers large parts of Italy, but it is not comprehensive. I admit that not every guide book can write about every single thing, but if you only use this to base your trip, you will miss amazing things. We used it as a basis to plan our trip, but when using the internet to gather more details, we found a lot of other things that could have been included. Overall, the advice given in the book is useful, but it is not the absolute.

Very good book but was bulky and heavy to pack around

My country—so, so beautiful 🤩 I have been back 20 times and I love home. Great history, beauty, and wonderful people. Rent a car and drive to Cefalù, Taormina, Erice, and the list keeps growing—even Lascirra Frida the home of Frank Sinatra’s family!

Always buy books before my trips. Have several from Steves. This is super helpful before traveling to north Italia

What a comprehensive book to begin dreaming and planning a journey. There is a pull-out map of Italy, which will be handy—lots of information to sift through.

This was an invaluable resource in planning my trip to Italy. his audio guides are the best! They became a highlight of our experience. He covers every detail you can imagine to make travel to a foreign country very manageable.

So much information in a concise format ! Easy to read ! His books are my go to when travelling to à new destination

Terrific book! Comprehensive and detailed with great suggestions. So much great detail and insight. My only VERY small niggle is that he tosses in the odd hotel recommendation that he especially likes and I go, ooooh, sounds great, let me check that one out. And it's $1200 a night. Siiiigh. Not quite the circle I travel in. But overall, very well worth the money and a fantastic resource for anyone planning a trip.

This doesn’t go south of Pompeii so since we were travelling to Sicily, wasn’t very helpful.I love Rick steves books so I was surprised. Just letting other knows in case they want Sicily