Best Maps?

Streetwise are fine for the urban areas. Michelin the best for driving.

Ditto above.

We used Michelin and Freytag & Berndt when we drove around Sicily a few years ago.

I've only used Michelin maps, they work pretty well. Streetwise is good for major cities. You will be well advised to invest in a good Garmin or TomTom GPS. In Italy, street signs in town are rare (although all the streets have names). Even if you know the street you want to turn on, you will be hard pressed to find it. We bought our TomTom after our first driving experience in Italy (I had driven in Northern Europe many times without needing one). Without the GPS we found ourselves guessing our location in towns by the shape of blocks and placement of squares and roundabouts (not very effective). The Autostrada are equally hard. Signs don't say A1 West - instead they say the name of three towns you never heard of (rather than the large city in that direction). Signs are at the exit, so you don't have time to consult the map to see if those towns are the direction you want. Even when you know you want to take an exit toward the West, the one that looks right often bends around taking you East. You then lose a lot of time driving to the next exit (sparse because each has toll booths), paying your toll, finding a way over the autostrada and an onramp to go the other direction.

On the road, I prefer the Michelin road maps in the coiled booklet for ease of use. The small folding style from guide books are my favourite for walking, especially the laminated ones.

Thanks. We are bringing our TOMTOM with Italy maps downloaded onto to. But I wanted some other back up maps to count on as well, especially walking in the bigger cities.

We had a GPS with us in Spain but also took maps. In a few areas of road contruction and route changes the GPS did not know wich way to send us - luckily we had maps handy.

I also get by with the maps from the TI ,hotel and Steves books.I have found Steves books provide me with everything I need to get around cities and villages.I use a Garmin and the rental company provides a map that I use as backup on the road.

If you're thinking of walking in cities, you can easily get by with maps from the TI (usually free). Michelin makes maps in an array of scales, so you should be able to find a very large scale map that covers just the city. I've never used Streetwise but have always heard good things about them for big cities. I think Streetwise would be useful in Rome but probably not for Venice or small towns.