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If I had do things again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Bringing a video camera to Italy was the best decision I made. A still photo of the fountains at Trevi or Piazza Navona just doesn’t compare with the sounds and sights that make these places so memorable. And when you get inside basilicas and museums, you will find that cameras are often forbidden. It isn’t the camera they are worried about, but the flash. Asking people to suppress the flash is often harder to master than to just say ’no cameras’. But video cameras are fine to capture relics, people, landmarks, events and Italy in general.
Not all museums in Italy allow photographs. Take the Doges Palace in Venice for instance. No cameras and no video, whatsoever. All you can do is to marvel the 24K gold frames mounted above you on the ceilings. The Uffizi is the same. You cannot snap a picture of Venus in its birth or Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Maggi. So is the Galleria dell’Accademia where Michelangelo’s David resides. And certainly, you cannot walk away with any photographs or video of Leonardo’s The Last Supper in Milan.
What is a traveller to do? Each of these places have museum bookstores for you to pick up books, souvenirs and postcards. Pick up a few postcards and possibly, so souvenir gifts to show that you’ve been there. Keep your ticket stubs and file them away in scrapbooks when you get home. Don’t get tempted in buying and lugging home the large pictorial books. Instead take down the ISBN, title of the book and author then when you get home, find it at your local bookstore. I did and I saved myself money too. I bought the large Uffizi Gallery book for just $15 at Indigo/ Chapters that sold for over 45 euros in Florence. The only books I recommend to buy in Italy are the 3D books. These books are amazing because they show present day and with a transparency overlay, they show what the scene looked like in the past. Look for one for Pompeii, the Vatican and the Roman Forum. And they are half the size of the large pictorial books which makes bringing 2-3 of them back easy.
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