Best Tuscany Travel Guides

There are dozens of guidebooks to choose from. Most of them do a decent job of collecting up-to-date info and facts about places. But insightful writing that really helps you to appreciate your visits is harder to come by. What we value most is the quality of understanding that the guidebook writer brings to the task of presenting Tuscany. Here are our two favorites.

Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches

by Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls

Our favorite general guide to Tuscany has been—and remains—The Cadogan Guide written by Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls. We used it extensively when we first started exploring Tuscany in the early nineties, and we still turn to it whenever we head off to explore someplace new.

What we love about this guidebook is the depth of knowledge that the authors bring to everything they touch, their spot-on humor and sophistication, their willingness to distinguish between the truly outstanding and the second rate. Perhaps most impressive of all is their remarkable ability to summarize essentials of art, history, culture and biography in a few insightful paragraphs and to guide the reader unerringly to what is most worthy of attention.

If you are looking for the latest up-to-date info about cheap places to eat and sleep, there are probably better choices than The Cadogan Guide. But if you want to explore Tuscany in the company of a pair of wise and engaging world travelers, Dana and Michael should be your first choice.

(P.S. If you are not planning to include Umbria in your travels this time around, you might consider the alternate version of this quide which focuses only on Tuscany).

Insight Guide: Tuscany

by Barbara Balletto

Although The Cadogan Guide is crammed with information about everything under the Tuscan sun, one thing you won’t find much of are pictures. Of the various guidebooks that try to show you as well as tell you (Eyewitness Guides, Knopf Guides, etc.), our favorite is the Insight Guide to Tuscany. Published in collaboration with The Discovery Channel, the Insight Guide has extensive pictures of landscapes, people, monuments and museums. And the quality of the photos is outstanding. They capture the flavor and feel of village life, of the rhythms of people working in the fields or relaxing in the piazza, of the midday light in stone quarries in the north and nature reserves in the south, and a hundred other places in between.

Apart from the exquisite photos, the Insight Guide has well-written and informative sections on places of interest throughout Tuscany. Florence is given primary emphasis, but many of the other regions and towns also receive substantial coverage. The combination of good writing and superb pictures really gives you a feel for the different corners of Tuscany. Once again, you wouldn’t buy this guidebook primarily for its food and lodging information. However, we do highly recommend the Insight Guide both as a travel companion when you are on the road and for consulting while you are still planning your trip and trying to decide where to go and what to see.