Time Out guide to Mallorca and Menorca, Spain.

Mallorca and Menorca - two of Europe's most popular holiday resorts - are often unfairly maligned as overdeveloped package tour playgrounds. This guide seeks to redress the balance by revealing the variety to be found on these small islands.

Annotation Madrid emerges from several years under wraps to reveal its new facelift. Streets have been prettified, boulevards swept through and transport untangled. This in addition to its perennial attractions, whether your interests lie in spectacular opera productions or chirpy folkloric zarzuela; in cutting-edge cuisine or ancient, tiled tabernas; in designer-shoe shopping or mooching around flea markets. Put together by journalists resident in the city, Time Out Madrid also covers the artistic jewels housed in the Prado, Thyssen and Reina Sofia, as well as the etiquette of watching a bullfight or joining in with a flamenco performance, plus where to stay and how to escape the city heat.

"Time Out Vienna" takes you into the grandiloquent streetscapes of this elegant cultural capital. While pinpointing the essentials on the capital of the Habsburgs and its fabulous musical tradition, the guide hails the city's commitment to its citizens, the exuberance of its contemporary culture and the sensual pleasures that lurk amid the grandeur of its kaleidoscopic architecture.

Florence has the greatest collection of Renaissance art in the world, and a character list that reads like a Who's Who of the period's greatest artists and thinkers u Dante, Leonardo, Michaelangelo u not to mention the powerful families who financed their work - the Medici and the Strozzi. Evidence of their lasting influence abounds today, including the discovery of a Leonardo fresco beneath a painting by Vasari, and the unearthing of Michaelangelo's plans for a church facade. The city's challenge today is to manage the resultant tourist hordes; a new entrance to an enlarged Uffizi should double tourist numbers to the gallery, while a tramline is intended to reduce the city's traffic.

An essential handbook for any visitor to Spain's most colorful city, this Time Out guide is packed with critical and up-to-the-minute details on the city's sights, arts, and entertinment. It includes information on accommodations, clubs, restaurants, fiestas and festivals, and trips out of the city to mountains, beaches, and villages of Catalonia. color maps. Color and b&w photos throughout.