Rome: Italy’s Grand Museum

Rome for families

Fabled city that it is, Rome can be overwhelming—it’s so big, so spread out and there’s so much to see that it is even more daunting when you’re traveling with children. Their attention span and patience may not equal yours, and their agenda may not include standing in lines or traipsing through gloomy churches and museums. These problems occur in any city, but Rome presents even more challenges to parents.

Like any place else, the trick is in finding those things that appeal to a child’s imagination, curiosity and fascination for the quirky and the mysterious. Rome may be more of a challenge, but it presents a lot of opportunities as well.

For older children who have studied ancient Rome, there is the attraction of familiarity, of seeing firsthand places that had existed for them only in the classroom, such as the Forum and Colosseum. But if they watch carefully, they also will find bits and pieces of ancient Rome hidden all around the city. Arches disappear into more recent buildings, windows are bricked in and half covered by later structures, streets curve around the long-gone foundations of arenas, bits of inscribed stone and carved columns are built into walls.

My daughter made a treasure hunt of these re-used fragments, “collecting” enough, she estimated, to construct an entire building. Her favorite, though, is still the enormous marble foot she found in a street off the piazza behind the Pantheon. None of us could picture how tall the whole statue must have been.

However, if you have younger children and their interest in climbing around on ruins begins to wane, the city offers two attractions designed for kids, worth adding to your itinerary.

• Rome's Trevi Fountain at night
• Jon Rawlinson

Time Elevator Roma is an animated look at Roman history for kids, a simulated action movie complete with special effects and seat-belted moving chairs. Explora is Italy’s first children’s museum filled with hands-on activities that teach children aged up to 12 about themselves and the world beyond. It has a puppet theatre and playground. Admission is timed, and by reservation only.

But there is much more in Rome to fire a child’s imagination. Getting to know the city and its neighborhoods is interesting in itself, and the long history offers many other springboards, from gladiators to spooky catacombs.

Getting there and getting around

International flights from North America arrive directly into Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, which is connected to the city’s Termini Station by trains every half hour. Once your luggage is in your hotel room, the best way to get around the city center and historic sights is by walking. Use public transportation for longer trips to the Vatican and Trastevere and the catacombs. Rome’s metro is not very useful for getting around the city center because its two lines are more designed to shuttle commuters in from the suburbs.

For more information visit TravelMuse's Rome guide.