Michelin Green Guide Venice and the Veneto: Travel Guide

Like most Michelin Green Guides the Venice guide is chock full of practical information and comprehensive descriptions of what’s in front of you. And the star rating system is well done. BUT: like other Green Guides I know, the turn-by-turn directions in the walking tours are frequently inaccurate or at least hard to understand. Michelin should hire a cadre of students to proofread the texts sur place!

Die Grüne Reihe ist einfach klasse. Leider gibt es den tollen Italienführer noch nicht aktualisiert, aber für unsere Zwecke war der kleinere Venetoführer ausreichend.

The first pre-requisite of any visit to a town or country (imho) is a decent map. In the 70's the Italy green guide was replete with town maps of excellent quality. Current editions have far fewer and have become bloated. I purchased this guide ostensibly to replace the 2003 edition of Venice, which it does not in any way shape or form. Critically there is not a detailed plan of the whole of Venice, as exists in the earlier 'Venice'. What you get instead are a series of thumbnails of local walks, plus Padova and Verona. Also, why no maps of Vicenza, Chioggia, Mestre, Ferrara, Trieste etc.?? The book is 320 pages, not 500+, as described above. Photographs of buildings generally have all the appearances of casual snapshots, hugely distorted with converging verticals to die for. It is sad to see the decline of editorial and visual standards. The one useful inclusion is the detailed public transport plan, but this is microscopically small - impossible to see properly without a magnifying glass ,and could easily have been printed at twice the size. Better still would have been new improved cartography I would welcome a better commentary on public transport, and less emphasis on touring by car- this has lessened slightly of late (though arguably michelin's core business is with the motor user?) .