A Travel Guide To... - Renaissance Florence - Hardcover

James Barter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159018145X ISBN 13: 9781590181454

Publisher: Lucent Books, 2002

Synopsis

This book is set in the year 1512, at the time of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and the Medici family, as a travel guide for first time visitors to Florence, Italy. The guide provides travelers to Renaissance Florence with information about everyday life in city, where to stay, how to find the great art and architectural treasures, as well as information about the city's history, festivities, sports, and great shopping sites.

About this title

Reviews

Grade 6-10-A Renaissance traveler would have greatly benefited from this guide, and modern students should likewise enjoy this vibrant look at Florence in the early 1500s. Presented in the format and tone of today's travel guides, the present-tense text is engaging and friendly. Chapters include "Arriving in Florence, Where to Stay and Eat" and "Shopping"-the latter containing tips on where to find the year's most fashionable dresses and how to order a custom-built suit of armor. The plentiful photographs, reproductions, diagrams, and maps interspersed throughout are mostly black and white; there is, however, one 16-page section of poorly reproduced, full-color artwork. A serviceable addition for Renaissance studies.
Toniann Scime, Amherst Museum, NY
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reviewed with Don Nardo's Ancient Athens.

Gr. 5-8. Like others in the A Travel Guide To series, these titles offer a great deal of cultural history in an unusual tourist-guide format, set during historical periods: 1512 B.C.E. in Florence and 340 B.C.E. in Athens. Chapters address standard guidebook fare: history, weather and geography, where to stay and what to eat, architectural and artistic monuments, sightseeing, and nearby attractions. Both books touch on, but don't adequately address, the lives of women (Athens is particularly confusing in its reference to marketplace etiquette between the sexes), and a casual mention in Athens' "Shopping" section that slaves can be purchased in the marketplace needs explanation. But each chapter brings history alive through the details of how people really lived, and there are plenty of facts to catch young readers' interest: male athletes in Athens train and compete completely naked, for example, and residents of Florence only bathe once or twice a month. The dull, mostly black-and-white photos are a poor compliment to the travel-guide format, but maps and extensive notes enhance the creative approach and interesting texts. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Lucent Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 159018145X
• ISBN 13: 9781590181454
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112