On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, Dan Stephenson wrote:

For Italy, nothing beats the TCI (Italian Touring Club) Atlante Stradale

I'm really interested visiting Roman and if possible Greek ruins.
I've been to Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Paestum, and "all" the
Greek sites in Sicily. Does these TCI atlases indicate where ruins
like these are located?

I can't check straight now from here. I'm afraid the scale of the maps
will not allow to spot easily archaelogical sites, although I'm pretty
sure at least the main ones will be marked with some symbol.

If you want some detail you should get a real guidebook. I know TCI
publishes some in English, which you should be able to find via the
links I provided. Definitely TCI produces excellent guides in Italian
with nice and accurate city and site maps. I could recommend the
following :

- the "Guida Rapida" (I guess this is now 5 volumes in pocket format,
20x10 cm or thereabout : NW, NE, Centre-N, Centre-S, S and islands).
I remember for instance that with an OLD Rapida tiny map I was able
to walk from Capri town to Villa Jovis and all around the coast

- the "Green" guides (Guide Verdi, this is also in the same format as
the Rapida) There are green guides for regions, and other for
smaller areas with a bit more of detail. (and there are also green
guides for most European countries and some other ones as well).
I confess I liked more the old arrangement (which had an itinerary
section with altitude profiles at front, an an alphabetic section
with places : a short list of hotels, restaurant, tourist offices,
some history, list of sights and a map for major places). The new
arrangement has nice introductory sections on history and so on,
but then places are grouped in itinerary chapters (these contains
maps and sights) while the hotels etc. are listed alphabetically
by place at the end. I know they are planning a major refurbishment.
The newer green guides will be issued in two volumes, so that they
could update the hotel and tourist office addresses one more often.

- the "Red" guides ("guide rosse") are thicker volumes, but still
in a (smaller) pocket size. These are considered as official
references by the Ministry of Culture. They are extremely detailed
and list every monument or detail. However they are more expensive
and updated less often.

There are also fancier guides more oriented towards young people, and
some of them are adapted from foreign series (like the Routard). Fancier
images (like on the Golden Guides), but I don't quite like them.
Perhaps the only useful thing in this category are the Cartoville (these
are city maps in a convenient folding format).

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