DK's Eyewitness Travel Guides are our best travel companion during our tour of Europe. Full of tips, pictures, maps, site info, history, local reference ... every page is not only helpful but beautiful. The layout anf format is very innovative and reader friendly, a ture standing out from any other travel books. It was interesting to see that almost everywhere we went, we saw other people (tourists apparently) holding and checking the same DK book on the street.
The coverage is comprehensive and growing year after year, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice ... every city we went have its own Eyewitness serie. We studied them before our trip, consulted them during our trip, and kept them as memo and photo book after our trip. They are simply essential part of the travel fun.

I recommend buying indiviual city/area book wherever possible instead of the country book. For example, buy Rome, Florence, and Venice books instead of Eyewitness Italy (unless your destination doesn't have its own Eyewitness). That way you get more detailed and targeted info.

I have to confess up front. I love these books. I must have a dozen. I really like the Paris book, and the one for Prague, and Stockholm, and South Africa, and .... You get all the detailed material similar to other great travel books plus you get great visuals.

On a cold day back here in the USA (or Canada) or elsewhere, have a glass of French wine and sit in a nice chair or in the garden on a warm day and read this book. For a moment you will be back in Paris. The same with the Stockholm book. You are back in a small restaurant or museum.

It is not a Michelin guide but that is okay. The photos and desicriptions and cutaway drawings are excellent and more than make up for any lack of small detail. But there is lots of detail here. The book includes the history of Paris and many details on the art, art galleries, parks, cutaway views of historical buildings, and many other things of interest. The history is summarized at the beginning of the book with historical time lines and cross referenced to the culture and political figures. A solid 400 page effort - lots of stuff to see and absorb.

It has the other things too such as maps, accomodations, transportation, and the rest. The Michelin guide has more sub-detail but this book is still the best for a visitor.

You will be pleasantly suprised with the depth and quality of this book and it makes a nice souvenir to refresh your memory.

Jack in Toronto

I think the title of my review wraps it all up: the eyewitness guides are a work of graphic art. Their highlight is probably the great work on the maps, both small and large scale, which are of great help as you navigate around the city looking for sights. As a tool for reaching all of the sights you want to see, I would say that the Eyewitness Guide is among the best, with its street map, neighborhood maps and Metro/subway guide. In addition to this, as another positive comment I would say that it is a great guide to take on a trip if you don't have much time and you need information presented in an easy-to-read, simple manner. The drawings and photos, and the way they are laid out, is very appealing.

The advantages stop there, however. If you really want to get to know a city, you simply need more in-depth historical and cultural information on the sights you are seeing. Most of the locations described in the Eyewitness Guide do not stretch beyond a paragraph or two, which is quite superficial in my opinion. If you really want to know about the history behind the church, monument, museum or park you have traveled so far to see, you will definitely need another guidebook to give you any kind of detail. This flaw becomes far worse when you read the sections on sights outside of the city or in the suburbs (which are many!). The descriptions become utterly superficial.

Harsh critique also for the hotel and restaurant information, which is limited to places designed for the rich and famous, or at least the very upper of the upper-middle class. The best guides give you a little info. on all styles of lodging and food, from low budget to luxury, but these guides make little effort to do so, and even the information on the laps of luxury is limited to little symbols, instead of providing descriptions like other guides do.

With this combination of characteristics, I think Eyewitness is good to take along for a short trip in which you have little time to spend seeing the city and you don't really care about getting any deep information on what you're seeing. Otherwise, keep looking for another guidebook.

I have the older edition that I bought back in 2001, and it's fantastic. I used this book everywhere for my two-week trip to Paris, and more than the other three guide books I bought. The reason this book is so useful is that it doesn't describe the sites in long wordy paragraphs like the others. It's the one book I carried around everywhere. It includes tons of pictures that allow you tell quickly if you're at the right location, even if there's no sign (or if the sign is in a strange language). The pictures and illustrations make all the difference, and the layout is easy to understand. The maps are also useful and clear. The binding is also reasonably good quality, so that it hasn't fallen apart in spite of heavy use. I just loaned my friend this book, and he used it on his ten-day trip to Paris, and he also liked it. I can only imagine that this latest edition is as good or better than the one I have. If I make another trip to another place or city, I'll check what this series has to offer, first.

...P>It is outstanding. The illustrations are excellent, the maps accurate and detailed. The only better map is the No 2 Plan to public transport available free from Metro stations, which shows metro , RER and bus routes with named streets, and the more expensive book maps by arrondissement available in Paris.

But unless you want to cart around two books, the maps in this volume are excellent (warning: there are a few places they DON'T cover, so if you are planning visits to some of the less touristed arrondissements, you will need a map book as well).

I used this in conjunction with Fodor's Around Paris With Kids, and together they covered everything we needed as a family.

The house style of Eyewitness Guides is now well-known, and this volume is as good as, if not better, than any. You really can't go wrong if you pack this. It will even make you want to go places you might otherwise have dismissed.