Frommer's Rome Day by Day (Frommer's Day by Day - Pocket)

Unless you want to hire a tour guide or you have a friend who lives in Rome to take you around this is your best bet. Short and to the point reviews and info on all the things you want to see in Rome. Some of the prices in the book are already out of date. The Leonardo Express train to and from the airport now costs 11 Euros, not 9.50. The map that is included is good enough but lacks some detail. It would be nice if the map included little icons of the more popular sites for ease of reading. That said your hotel will probably have a tourist map for you for free. Using this book I put together an intinerary that was good for me in about an hour.

I purchased this book because it had lots of maps and suggested itineraries. With only a short stay in Rome planned, it seemed like an excellent guide. However, we found the book very unhelpful. First, it is already outdated. I believe it is from 2009. Some things were closed, prices were off, and some tips were inaccurate. For example, it suggests you leave the sistine chapel through the door on the right to go straight to St. Peters, however that entryway is now only accessible to tour groups. The other main complaint is that the book is extremely repetitive rather than going into depth. There are so many itineraries and some are practically the same (ex: Baroque walk and Piazza Navona walk are practically the same) A few more sentences on each site would have been a much more useful way to stretch out the book - the descriptions were way too abbreviated.

This book helped us greatly. We got around Rome fine for our first time. We liked this one better than the top 10 book.