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The Rough Guide to Rome by: Martin Dunford List Price: £11.99 Price: £3.95 You Save: £8.04 (67%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 914 EAN: 9781858289014 ISBN: 1858289017 Label: Rough Guides Ltd Manufacturer: Rough Guides Ltd Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 448 Publication Date: January 27, 2005 Publisher: Rough Guides Ltd Studio: Rough Guides Ltd Sales Rank: 144819 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Sunday Telegraph, London, 23 April 2000: Perfect if you are on a weekend or short break...[with] an impeccable selection of hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs Synopsis: The Rough Guide to Rome is the definitive guide to this enthralling city. This new edition includes a 24-page full-colour introduction to the city and its many highlights - from the Sistine Chapel to the Catacombs. Throughout the guide there are entertaining accounts of every sight and activity along with the pick of the best hotels, restaurants and bars that the city has to offer. The guide also includes accounts and practical details of all the day trips possible from the capital, including Tivoli, Ostia and the nearby beaches. There are over 25 maps and plans covering every part of the city, pinpointing the locations of the restaurants, hotels and guesthouses included in the listings. Excerpted from Rome: the Mini Rough Guide by Martin Dunford. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved: Introduction Of all Italy's historic cities, it's perhaps Rome which exerts the most compelling fascination. There's more to see here than in any other city in the world, with the relics of over two thousand years of inhabitation packed into its sprawling urban area. You could spend a month here and still only scratch the surface. As a historic place, it is special enough; as a contemporary European capital, it is utterly unique. Perfectly placed between Italy's North and South, and heartily despised by both, Rome is perhaps the perfect capital for a country like Italy. Once the seat of a great empire, and later the home of the papacy, which ruled its dominions from here with a distant and autocratic hand, it's still seen as a place somewhat apart from the rest of Italy, spending money made elsewhere on the corrupt and bloated government machine that runs the country. Romans, the thinking seems to go, are a lazy lot, not to be trusted and living very nicely off the fat of the rest of the land. Even Romans find it hard to disagree with this analysis: in a city of around four million, there are around 600,000 office-workers, compared to an industrial workforce of one sixth of that. For the traveller, all of this is much less evident than the sheer weight of history that the city supports. There are of course the city's classical features, most visibly the Colosseum, and the Forum and Palatine Hill; but from here there's an almost uninterrupted sequence of monuments - from early Christian basilicas, Romanesque churches, Renaissance palaces, right up to the fountains and churches of the Baroque period, which perhaps more than any other era has determined the look of the city today. There is the modern epoch too, from the ponderous Neoclassical architecture of the post-Unification period to the self-publicizing edifices of the Mussolini years. All these various eras crowd in on one other to an almost overwhelming degree: there are medieval churches atop ancient basilicas above Roman palaces; houses and apartment blocks incorporate fragments of eroded Roman columns, carvings and inscriptions; roads and piazzas follow the lines of ancient amphitheatres and stadiums. All of which is to say that Rome is not an easy place to absorb on one visit, and you need to approach things slowly, even if you only have a few days here. You can't see everything on your first visit to Rome, and there's no point in even trying. Most of the city's sights can be approached from a variety of directions, and it's part of the city's allure to stumble across things by accident, gradually piecing together the whole, rather than marching around to a timetable on a predetermined route. In any case, it's hard to get anywhere very fast. Despite regular pledges to ban motor vehicles from the city centre, the congestion can be awful. On foot, it's easy to lose a sense of direction winding about in the twisting old streets. In any case, you're so likely to come upon something interesting it hardly makes any difference. Rome doesn't have the nightlife of, say, Paris or London, or even of its Italian counterparts to the north - culturally it's rather provincial - and its food, while delicious, is earthy rather than haute cuisine. But its atmosphere is like no other city - a monumental, busy capital and yet an appealingly relaxed place, with a centre that has yet to be taken over by chainstores and big multinational hotels. Above all, there has perhaps never been a better time to visit the city, whose notoriously crumbling infrastructure is looking and functioning better than it has done for some time - the result of the feverish activity that took place in the last months of 1999 to have the city centre looking its best for the Church's jubilee, which they expect to attract several million extra visitors. On the surface the city still looks much as it has done for years. But there are museums, churches and other buildings that have been "in restoration" as long as anyone can remember that have reopened, and some of the city's historic collections have been rehoused, making it all the more easy to get the most out of Rome. Opening Hours Most shops and businesses don't open until lunchtime or late afternoon on a Monday; during the rest of the week, opening times are generally Tuesday to Saturday, 9am to around 1pm, and then 4pm until around 7.30pm - although there are a few places in the city centre that are open right through. Most places are closed on Sundays. All but the most popular or touristed churches keep to fairly predictable hours, most opening early each morning, at 7am or 8am, and closing up around noon, and opening again from 4pm until around 7pm. Archeological sites keep longer hours, usually open from dawn until dusk. Most museums are closed Mondays, and then open from around 10am to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday, and for half the day on Sunday. Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating: - Good book but latest version availableThis was a usful guide to Rome. Only real issue is around restaurants but this is the same with any Lonely Planet/Rough Guide. Either they are no longer there (probably go bust) or they are not as expected. With food I would recommend you look around and dont make a rash choice. Also, try to avoid the main tourist areas for food/drink as you will get ripped off. It seems that there are two price lists... one for tourists and one for locals. Rome is a fantastic city and this book will guide you through well. The latest version is available and is only £6.99 so I think its worth the trade up. The main differences though is mainly around where to stay, eat, drink but if your not too concerned about those and just want a book for the main ... Read More: Rating:  - Excellent guide book that fits into your back pocket.Stacks of information & history in a little A6 (?) book. The guide book provided a fantastic experience navigating us through the Forum and the Palatine. Plenty of info on all the areas of the city, the transport system and a handy map section at the back. I've taken it on my last three visits to Rome and it never disappoints. On the down side, we didn't have much luck with the featured restaurants. Please note : Don't buy this guidebook if you want glossy photos. There are only maps, plans and drawings. Rating:  - Lost in RomeThis was the most disappointing guide book I've ever used. I've just returned from Rome and have spent a long weekend cursing this book! The maps were next to useless (thank God for the freebie map I was given in the hotel). It is incredibly frustrating to try and find somewhere that has been recommended in the book only to find that it either isn't marked on the book's maps or worse is beyond the area covered by the maps! Why tantalise the reader with the promise of something good only to deny them the means of finding it? We stopped trying out the recommended restaurants in this book after two disasters. This book is going to be recycled very fast in this household! Rating: - A Must HaveJust back from 3 days in Rome and it would not have been the same without the Rough Guide. What a source of information. From the history of Rome to the maps to the individual descriptions of each place of interest, it never left my side!! Thoroughly recommended. Rating: - Excellent GuideI've just got back from Rome, and this book was my guide the whole time I was there. It has enough information within it, to ensure you know the important aspects of the many historical sites. It also has great listings on eating out, and where to stay, and lots of snippets of information that will come in handy. This guide stayed in my ruck sack the whole time I was there (I enhanced the maps at the back of the guide by purchasing a Lonely Planet laminated fold away map - great when it starts to rain). As for Rome itself, what a beautiful place, I stood in the colleseum on an upper level directly opposite where gladiators would have made their first entrance into the arena, at the start of the many games held there, and ... Read More: |
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