We will be going on the Village Italy tour in 2019. Looking at the Italy guidebook, there does not appear to be information on Ravenna or Montefalco in them.
I’m curious as to which guidebook book(s) you would recommend to supplement the Italy guidebook to get information on these towns.
I’ve been on Village italy, but Montefalco wasn’t included on our trip, rather, another small hill town. But I have been to Ravenna. Although neither town is included in RS Italy, you can find a great deal of info on each town by simply googling them. You’ll find Ravenna has much more written about it, as the mosaics there are stunning and quite well known. In fact, RS has an article on Ravenna here
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/ravenna-italys-byzantium.
Your tour will have not a lot of free time in either place, so I wouldn’t worry about getting a separate guidebook for either of them. The info you find online will more than suffice.
Looking at my 2016 edition, there’s a very comprehensive section about Ravenna in the “Near Venice” section. Montefalco is not mentioned in the alphabetical index at the end of the guide. I don5 know if the Ravenna section has been deleted from newer editions.
Looks like Rick's Venice guide still has a section on Ravenna: https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/venice-guidebook .
I don't think Rick has ever covered Montefalco. But Ravenna comes and goes, both from his Italy book and his Venice book. One of his staff has written on this Forum that his publisher will not allow a single extra page to be added to the Italy book, so it may just be a matter of space.
To find out what's in a specific book, go to the listing on the Shop Online section of this website, then click "What's Included." Doing that for his 2018 books, I see that Ravenna is included in Venice, but not in Italy.
I really like Ravenna and there are quite a few things to see in the city center. I used RS book the first time but there is a lot of information online as well. The mosaics are absolutely amazing. Everything is an easy walk from the train station.
Note that the "Best of Italy" guidebook doesn't contain the same information as the "Italy 2018" (or 2019) guidebook. One may contain a section on Ravenna while the other doesn't. If neither covers Ravenna, Lonely Planet's Italy guidebook does. Rick's guidebook did have a short section on small towns near Assisi one year (2009, I believe). It listed Montefalco but provided only minimal information. If Rick's guidebooks don't cover Ravenna or Montefalco, your guide will likely provide a map or other such information about them when your tour visits.
