The biography of Karl Baedeker, available at the moment from the ODNB site, reminds me of my first visit to Italy in 1959, when my companion on my solitary pilgrimage was a Baedeker from around 1904. It was quaintly old-fashioned, and advised me to tip the attendant 5 sous and so on, but, my word, it was thorough. I can shut my eyes and see orange-brown floor plans of St Peter's and the Brera Gallery which were still useful more than half a century after their publication.

That Italy trip included Pompeii, about which I knew nothing. The Cambridge Latin Course had still to be written, and one could get as far as Part 1 of the Classical Tripos at Cambridge University without the slightest idea that the Romans were real people with fairly ordinary daily lives. So Pompeii was at once a confusing eye-opener and an irrelevance.

What I gained from those Baedeker-guided weeks hitch-hiking around Italy was the beginning of an appreciation of and love for Italian art. Baedeker told me which were the 'best' artists, demonstrating their comparative greatness with bigger or smaller circles. Raphael, I remember, was represented by the largest circle, and Michelangelo and Leonardo by slightly smaller ones. All right, it was prescriptive, and showed the taste of the turn of the century, but it gave me a wonderful start. When I happened upon Raphael's Ascension in a church in Venice (and not in the gallery where, Baedeker assured me, it had been in 1904) I sat and looked at it for a full quarter hour, because my guide told me how good it was; and, lo and behold, as I stared I was transported with delight. It really is an inspiring painting. Go and see it and find out for yourself.

On later visits I bought an up-to-date Baedeker. Ah, the disappointment! It was in full colour and a typeface that was easier on the eye, but the careful detail had gone. Instead of listing almost every picture in the Uffizi, and giving an asterisk, or even two, to the best, the new book mentioned only the highlights that any tour guide would lead a party to see. Nowadays you are better off with Let's Go or the Rough Guide to give you the practical advice (Take the second turn right, knock on the blue door and ask for the key - that sort of thing) and a second-hand Blue Guide (dated just before they too went all superficial) for the cultural stuff.

So much better in the heday of Karl Baedeker.