Knopf MapGuide: Florence (Knopf Mapguides)

I've used Knopf Mapguides all over the world and find them to be the single best way to orient and explore a major city. Their pocket sized format and clear, fold out maps make them perfect for navigating a city without looking like a clueless tourist unfolding a huge map on a streetcorner. The restaurant and attraction recommendations are excellent. If you buy only one guide to vist one of the world's major cities, get one of these.

Concise, yet comprehensive. Small book, but generous maps. Fewer recommendations than other guidebooks, but better, more varied choices are presented, and just about all bases are covered from restaurants, hotels, shopping & markets, to bars & nightlife, museums and other tourism interests, etc., making this the best mapguide book series around. When we visited Florence in March, we brought this book and Rick Steves' guide for Florence and Tuscany. We found this is the book we used the most on the road. Florence is a very walkable town, and single-sheet street maps abound, but sometimes you need a close-up or a pull-back perspective of the area's streets. We never got lost with this mapguide. On the contrary, it pulled us out of a few jams and actually helped us discover new little gems about the town. I just purchased another mapguide for Paris, which my sister is dying to borrow, and for my husband, the Washington D.C. mapguide, since we're planning to go someday. Today, Rome and...Read more

This map was an enourmous help on my trip to Florence. The pages fold out into large maps of each portion of the city. The recommended things to see are spot on and the descriptions give a great idea of what you are in store for. I used this so much that I found myself reaching for it when I was looking for my Italian phrase book (this is not a language guide). I highly recommend it.
Also, the map does not go much further south than Porta Romana, so if you are staying south of the city I recommend grabbing a cheap paper map that covers the south end of the city.
One thing worth noting is that I could not find some of the recommended stores. I assume they have moved or closed their doors since this was published.