Wallpaper* City Guides

I started collecting Wallpaper* City Guides sometime last year after first stumbling upon one in a coffee shop. After reading tons of white texts on numerous Rogue Guides and Lonely Planet, the concise and design-led manner in which Wallpaper presents its city guides caught my eyes. Text were minimal, but always informative. Suggestions were limited to one venue per page or two, sometimes even three!

Wallpaper* City Guides are supplementary guides aimed at design, style and culture conscience travelers. These are not meant to replace your typical Lonely Planet, which are good for pointing out obvious tourist stuff. Published by Phaidon, City Guides books on the other hand are guides for architecture and design fans seeking a more sophisticated and curated experience on whichever cities they are visiting. For example, a listing in Copenhagen suggested a visit to an Arne Jacobsen designed petrol station about 20km outside Copenhagen.

Our current City Guides collection currently number about fifteen, and growing. We aim to get a City Guides book for every city we visited and those we are planning to visit. Some we've skipped (like Genoa) because we were only in the city for a couple of hours, though we will likely visit again due to its proximity to dreamy Cinque Terre. Despite its diminutive and pocketable design, we do not make it to a lot of the venues suggested - normally out of budget constraints - but that's fine as it means we have to visit again.