National Geographic Traveler: Italy, 5th Edition Paperback – January 3, 2017

This is a great planning guide for where to go, what to see, and great itineraries. It is organized by region and is a nice blend of history, culture, and scenery. It provides some great pictures to wet your appetite. If there are choices of some great things to visit in a region, it tells you the best options and may also offer some great out of the way places that are nearby (like a beautiful waterfall that is a short walk from where you are). That said, it does not tell you much info on where to stay, where to eat, and what hours places are open for. That I would use another guide for.

Clearly written with many good tips and much information. I also like the quality paper used.

Great book just stared reading it....Can't wait to map out my travels

This book had good background information, but I feel like it fell short on providing day-to-day information. I needed a secondary book on Italy before I felt I had all the info I needed.

It quickly got me up to speed on where to go, what to see and how to plan our trip.

Great Condition !! I've been to Italy 3 times and I still love this Book

Will help me in Rome

This book is embarassingly bad. I usually like Nat Geo travel guides for their good paper quality, glossy color photos, and in the past, descriptions of places I hadn't heard of to add to my itinerary. While the printing quality is typically high, everything else about this is lacking, due to author Tim Jepson's clear lack of knowledge of history. Several descriptions of "medieval" churches that at the latest were built in the 13th or 14th century were immediately followed by a list of the Renaissance paintings contained inside, with absolutely no discussion of the actual church architecture. My suspicions of his cluelessness about what medieval even means was cemented when I hit the Florence section. He refers to a "roll call of famous medieval names" including Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo, all of whom are from the Renaissance. He then claims Brunelleschi's Dome was medieval engineering when it was part of the defining transition to the Renaissance. (And I know only the basics of art and history but I at least know that!! A quick Google search could tell Jepson that.) His 15th century work should be a clue alone.The majority of the sites are lists of paintings and sculpture in various churches and cathedrals that are all Renaissance but mislabeled as medieval, so if you are interested in Italian Renaissance art, the book will give you a thorough idea of what is where. There are almost no non-art or non-historical sites in the entire book. A small handful of national parks are very briefly mentioned for having some forests or beaches but the idea that nature exists seems anathema to Jepson. For being the center of the ancient Roman civilization, this guide book has virtually no information on Roman sites aside from the Forum in the city of Rome itself.Even the idea of food tourism, a hugely popular part of Italian travel, is largely missing from the guide. There is a brief outline of a few Chianti wineries one could visit in Tuscany without any sidebar on the winemaking history, the actual specifics of wine varietal and their taste in any different region, or their export to the US. He does have a sidebar on how olive oil is produced, so he appears capable when it suits. There was also very little specialized information on regional foods to be sure to try.The most egregious fault of this book, however, was the complete omission of the region of Lazio, the part of Italy surrounding Rome and thus the part most likely to have tourists as day-trippers from Rome! It simply isn't there. The cities of Rome, Florence, and Venice have their own sections and the other regions are all covered but Lazio is simply skipped. I kept checking and rechecking as I planned my trip after focusing on the parts of Tuscany, Umbria, and Campania which I will be visiting as they neighbor Lazio and are within reach for the scope of my travel. There is just no information on anything for 50 miles north or south of Rome, making this guide particularly useless.The writing is also just lazy in parts, such as: "..before arriving at the villages of Praiano and Positano, two more majestically situated villages. From here the road runs around the tip of the peninsula to Sorrento, a popular package tour resort." He moves on from this offhand list of villages with no discussion why someone might want to visit any of them or pick one over another or indicate why he brings them up at all. Even a brief statement letting the reader know that they are similar but equally charming bases for exploration of the region would provide some context.The existing parts of the guide had some useful information I found but there was so much wrong with this I really wonder how it ever made it past an editor and I think National Geographic should be ashamed to have their famous name and logo attached to it.