Which Italy guidebook(s) to get?

Ben,

The Italy guidebook will be perfectly adequate for the locations you'll be visiting. The 2017 version will likely be released sometime this fall (September?).

As much as I like RS guidebooks let me suggest you consider looking at DK's "Top Ten" by city. These books are relatively small, and can come electronically. They give you the "Top Ten" things to see in each city, plus each one is then broken down into the top ten things to see at each. Pretty comprehensive and easy to use. They aren't available for all places but there is a long list.

One guidebook is enough and Rick Steves' Italy guidebook covers the areas you plan to visit. I also like the DK guides, however I'd go for the Italy one, not the multiple top 10. The DK guides are better for the displays of sights to visit. Rick Steves is richer in practical info. I like to get both. I use the DK as explanations of museums etc. I use RS for tips on restaurants, accommodations, and other tips.

In my opinion it is better to fly into Venice and fly out of Rome (the opposite of what you describe). The reason is that the flights back to North America depart from Europe in the morning and since the Venice airport is in the mainland far from the city center in the middle of the Venetian lagoon, departing from Venice requires getting up in the middle of the night to make the flight. The Rome airport, instead, is only 30 minutes from the city center, therefore making the return flight does not require you to wake up at an ungodly hour.

The sequence of travel could be: Venice - Florence (Tuscany) - Rome.

If you want to add the Cinque Terre, which is to the West of Tuscany, it is probably better to do it just before Rome. I'm not a huge fan of the Cinque Terre nowadays, since it has become rather crowded, but most Rick Steves' followers seem to want to visit the place at all costs.

Three weeks is a sufficient amount of time for you to go to the Gulf of Naples area instead, which offers a similar experience to Cinque Terre but with much more to see (Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, the islands of Capri Procida and Ischia and much more). I recommend at least 4 nights in the Sorrento/Amalfi area.

Totally agree with others, esp. on these points:
1. RS Italy book will meet your needs best - extremely practical info, detailed description of locations with self-guided walking tours, how to get around, how to see sites, which sites to see, maps and clear directions to everything. It's a thick book so do what he suggests: tear out the pages of places you're going and leave the rest of the book at home. DK is great, esp. gorgeous pictures and drawings but get these from the library to study, not as a primary guidebook.

1. Arriving in Venice and departing from Rome is much better than the reverse.

I've read through lots of guidebooks and I always come back to the RS books for my actual site planning. I use TA and other search engines to sort through lodging and I don't do any restaurant planning whatsoever. For figuring out what to see in each city and what day trips might make sense my RS books can't be beat...I just like the layout. I check the other ones out of the library for reference, but RS are the ones I travel with.

You can get the RS book in electronic format. I hate cutting up books because inevitably I decide to go somewhere not in my original plan, but the pages were left behind.

I'm another one that cringes at the thought of ripping a perfectly good guidebook apart. I have several RS guidebooks loaded on my iPhone, and they're very easy to carry!

Get hold of a copy of "Venice" by Jan Morris - you'd find it readily second hand and it makes no difference what edition you have. The best ever book written about Venice, not a travel guide, more a journey through the experience of Venice.

Also the National Geographic book, Venice, by Erla Zwingle, is good. Written around 1990, before Erla moved to Venice. I have a 1890 Baedeker for Venice, and it still works pretty well.

Guidebooks are great for covering lots of areas and for an overview, but if you have specialized interests they are all inadequate. Whether you concentrate on architecture, food, or history, you need to learn and research before you get there. Start reading books about the cities now, and the trip will be much richer. Two favs of mine are Ross King's 'Brunelleschi's Dome' and Alberto Angela's 'A Day in the Life of Rome'.

Ben, I think preferences for guidebooks tend to be like preferences for attractions: based on personal interests, depth of interests and style. The library has been a great resource for me when starting to plan a trip as I can check out a range to browse and make notes from. I'll usually end up with a favorite of the bunch, and that's the one I'll buy. Spend some time with them at bookshops as well.

I probably should note that I never use them for restaurants or hotels, or for details like entry fees, hours, etc. Too much can change between date of publication and date of the trip so websites are better resources for that info.

National Geographic publishes a guidebook to Florence and Tuscany that I like a lot. It might be more of a 'read beforehand' book than a 'bring with you' book.

I use guide books and the internet for planning before I leave. I like DK books to help me decide where I want to go and what I want to see. The "city" guides are much better for that than the "top 10" series, with more details, suggested daily itineraries, and walking tours. I like the RS books especially for the practical advice and self-guided tours.

Guide books are usually too big and/or heavy to carry around when I'm sightseeing. So I photocopy things like self-guided tours and maps at home. Then I toss them as I go along. I bought my first ebook, RS Barcelona, for my recent trip. It helped a lot in the planning and it was easy to use on my home computer. I found it a lot harder to use on my iPod Touch (like an iPhone) - both reading it in daylight and navigating through the book. So before I left home, I copied a lot of the information from the ebook onto individual pages that I could easily access on the iPod - and I printed out some of the pages too.

Have you looked at the books' descriptions? Each one has a section "is this the right book for me?" which will give you the answers you need.

BTW if you can reverse your trip, starting in Venice and ending in Rome, I think that's better. Venice is the perfect place to soak up the atmosphere while getting over jetlag (and culture shock). Rome is a big city with important sights, so it'll be much easier to absorb and enjoy at the end rather than the beginning. Added bonus, flights to the US usually leave Venice early in the morning, when it's particularly difficult (or expensive) to get to the airport. Rome's FCO is much easier to access.

Most people on this forum might not like me for this but I swear by Fodor's books. No guidebook has everything so reading several of them (all by different publishers) is my rule when I go to the library. But if you can get your hands on Fodor's Italy 2016 you should - it's much better than DK as the primary book to plan trips.

Thank you very much to everyone for the kind replies. I will certainly take the suggestion of starting in Venice and leaving from Rome. However someone did mention Naples. Geographically it seems it would make sense to visit the Naples area after Rome. The DK guides seem great, I've already ordered the Rick Steves' Italy guidebook and the DK Italy guidebook. I have plenty of time to read and study them both.

I'd like to rent a car at some point and visit the Tuscan countryside and perhaps visit a vineyard. I would also like to see an opera one night, perhaps in Rome. This is going to be my first time in Italy so I want to make the most of it.

How about an opera near Venice? I have heard great things about the ancient amphitheater in Verona for their opera. I am sure many on this site can comment...?

Wow Kathi, that looks incredible. I wonder how the experience compares to seeing opera indoors and the acoustics that go along with it.

chianti-liver, what a great suggestion. That's just the sort of place I am looking for.

Looks like the opera season at the Verona Arena doesn't start until late June, but you might want to check out La Fenice Opera House in Venice, which does have Spring performances. I haven't been to a performance, but did tour the building, which was beautiful and fascinating.

"Geographically it seems it would make sense to visit the Naples area after Rome."

Yes, Naples is south of Rome, so it seems to make sense to see if afterwards (starting from the north and working south). However, flights from Naples to the US will involve connections and are more limited than flights from Rome to the US. So, before you make any definite plans, investigate your flight options.

Also, many like to stay in Sorrento instead of Naples, and there's a bus direct from Sorrento to the Naples airport. So far so good. However, flights from Naples that connect with flights back to the US tend to leave very early - often, too early for that bus, so you may be stuck with a very expensive taxi (about €80-100). Not to mention waking up at 3 or 4 AM to make the taxi to make the flight.

You didn't say where you're coming from in the US. A coworker of mine was able to find a flight from Naples to Newark that took off around noon (I forget where it connected). This worked well for her, as she refuses to take very early flights. However, Newark has more flights from Europe than most other US airports and is also closer to Europe, so that gave her more options. If you're trying to get to, say, Seattle, you have far fewer choices.

Do you really want to take up valuable real estate in your suitcase, never mind the added weight? Load digital copies on your tablet or smartphone....or google what you are looking for... Books are great at home (lord knows I have a bookshelf full of them), but seems a waste in today's electronic world.

Mary, not everyone owns smartphones (we don't) and not everyone sightsees with ipads and the like (we don't). Guidebooks may be weight but there are all sorts of reasons why people may prefer them to other options.

LOL, light fingers aren't as interested in my guidebook as they might be to my electronics! :O)

For choosing hotels, I use Trip Advisor a lot, but read the reviews with some skepticism and some judgment. It's often a little cheaper to book directly through the hotel by phone/email. If they have on-line booking, it's often a service that takes the same commission as the booking sites.

For choosing sights, I often use Frommer's website. They list most sights, including some minor ones that are overlooked by the guide books, they rate them with 0-3 stars and have brief, useful descriptions. Times and prices change, so I rely on the official websites of the individual attractions - not any of the guide books.

And for Italy, download Rick's free audio tours, all of them. They are great. Be sure to print out the maps, otherwise some of them may be hard to follow.

I'm a tech-savvy guy, but I've never been a big fan of reading books on my iPad. And you also have to consider charging, theft, and caring for a tablet while out and about. I will most likely just be carrying a single guidebook in my day pack, so it's not a big deal.

We do bring an ipad for getting email and so we can be reached if need be; we just don't carry it around during the day.

You only need the RS Italy book vs. the individual ones. I received some flak for mentioning this before, but feel free to tear out the pages that you need; the book contents are a tool to help you. I staple the few pages together for each city we're visiting, and we review those on the train ride, along with summary pages from the internet, metro maps, etc. to decide which places we want to visit after we arrive.

We also liked the DK Venice & the Veneto book. We brought that book along to review in our hotel room.

You might want to consider adding a lake stop (Lake Como or Maggiore) or Dolomites to your itinerary since you've planned a reasonable amount of time to cover your locations, plus another.

Jean's right. The Italy book is very big, not convenient to use while you're out and about, for instance following one of Rick's very good self-guided tours. And a lot of it for places you aren't going to. Tear out the sections that you'll be using to take with you. You can get them bound at Kinko's if you don't want to carry them loose. The RS store even sells a reusable page binder - so I don't know why anyone would get on her case about ripping a book apart!

The DK books are heavy. I usually photocopy pages I think I'll want - like their walking tours and leave the book at home.