- Dorling Kindersley
Publishers Dorling Kindersley are known for their slant towards high-quality illustrations, and the first thing you notice about the Eyewitness Travel guide is the eye candy. There's a huge range of drawings, maps, photographs, and reproductions of paintings. These illustrations make a real difference to the way you use this book.
For example, the cartoonish three-dimensional maps of key sights are much easier to follow than the standard plans offered by most guidebooks. They're supplemented with photographs which both capture the atmosphere of the place (perfect for armchair travellers) and also help you to orient yourself when you're actually there. It's much easier to work out which temple is which in the forum when you have captioned photographs to refer to.
In fact, the range of illustrations brings up constant surprises. The section on Italian history includes a photographic guide to Christian symbolism, and the timeline of "modern Italy" has phtographs of everything from futurist sculptures to the Italian team that won the 1982 World Cup. The book finishes with a lengthy directory containing recommended places to eat, hotels, and other information.