Rome with Kids: The Best 3-Day Itinerary for Families
The Perfect Weekend in Rome with Kids!
If you’re planning a trip to Rome with kids and only have a few days, this is exactly what we would do! You only need around 3 days to see all of the major sites and thats all the time I usually like to spend in a big city at once with kids at a time anyways. Rome is one of those cities that feels magical… but also overwhelming if you don’t have a plan (especially with little ones). Between the crowds, the walking, and the sheer number of things to see, it can go from incredible to exhausting very quickly. Being in a big city with little kids can feel overwhelming to a lot of people but it doesn’t have to! It’s about having a mix of the must-see sights, hands-on experiences, and just enough downtime to actually enjoy it. I always tell my friends or other parents that it’s not going to be perfect. But kids follow your behavior so try to stay calm and don’t overpack your schedule. Also, if possible always have a few parks or play places bookmarked as some backups.
We recently spent a weekend in Rome with our kids, and after lots of trial and error, this is the itinerary we’d recommend to any family.
Where to Stay in Rome with Kids:
Family -Friendly Rome Hotel Option #1: ➡️ Rose Garden Palace Roma by OMNIA hotels
We love Rose Garden Palace for families visiting Rome because it gives you a peaceful, elegant place to recharge while still being close to all the major sights. The hotel is just a short walk from Villa Borghese park, so perfect for letting children run around, rent bikes and get a little break from the city or the sun. Also, we were only a short walk away from many major attractions like the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain are nearby without needing to take a bus or taxi. We like to be close enough to walk but not in the super busy spots so this location was PERECT!
The staff were very accommodating and friendly, they offered family-sized room options, the most amazing beautiful indoor pool and spa, & even with a sauna! We only spent a weekend here but the kids used the pool multiple times to cool down after walking around in the heat!
Family -Friendly Rome Hotel Option #2: ➡️ The Tribune Hotel - JDV by Hyatt
We found this hotel through Hyatt. It was directly across from the Villa Borghese and only about a 15 minute walk to the Trevi Fountain! We loved that they included breakfast and it was a mix of some hot food (American too! Like eggs, bacon, etc. which is harder to find than we realized in Italy) and pastries and other cold items also. The rooms were a good size and had some better options for families. It’s common for some rooms only fit 2 people in a room in Europe. This hotel has multiple room types that were great options for families.
They also included everything in the mini fridge for free! It had some water, soft drinks, juice and even wine and beer. They also have a cute rooftop restaurant where we had dinner our first night (we arrived late) and the food and drinks were reasonably priced and the view was amazing as we got to watch the sunset from up there. We would absolutely stay here again!
Family Friendly Rome Hotel Option #2: ➡️ Sofitel Roma Villa Borghese
We always love staying at a Sofitel. We have been to multiple all over Europe! This one specifically was so beautifully and in the best location! It was far enough away from the super busy foot traffic but close enough to walk to a lot of the attractions. These rooms were gorgeous and actually big for Europe. This hotel sells out fast so try to book as far in advance as possible. This hotel was also only about 5 minutes from the Villa Borghese park and 15 minutes to Trevi Fountain area. Breakfast can be included depending how you book. This Sofitel also had an amazing rooftop that you can have dinner or drinks on and that is where they have breakfast. It is also great views of the city! We highly recommend the Roma Sofitel but we love staying in them when traveling in Europe because it’s a trusted brand and we know what we are getting.
Some other good Rome hotel options for families with kids:
** Disclaimer: We have not stayed at the below properties but know people who have or they were recommended to us
- Pantheon Rome Relais -Budget friendly small apartment, only a 3 minute walk from the Trevi fountain
- Rental near Camp de’ Fiori- Sleeps 6 people and is great for a family, centrally located near one of our favorite Piazza’s - Piazza Novena.
- Hotel Scalinata Di Spagna - Near the Spanish Steps and a great find in a good location at a mid range price point
We recommend staying as central as possible in Rome so you can easily get around and go back to the room when needed—this makes a huge difference when traveling with kids. Public transportation can be a little unreliable. We have been to Rome a few times now and loved this area because we were in walking distance of SO much! We were across from the Villa Borgeghese Park for the kids to run around and they had multiple restaurants and stands for coffee, gelato or wine! It was the perfect way to start the day with the kids.
Top tours to book in advance
👉🏻Golf Cart Tour of Rome: 3-Hour Private Tour of the City's Icons and Secrets
This is the exact tour we did and LOVED it! It was the highlight of the trip for us! It is pricey because it’s private so only your group will be on the golf cart.
Why We Loved It:
Completely customizable – you choose what you want to see
Minimal walking – huge win for kids (and parents/grandparents) no one complained that their feet hurt or they were tired!
Covers so much in a short time
Access to hidden spots you’d never find on your own
Engaging guide who tells you the history of what you are seeing and made it fun for everyone
Train to be a gladiator at a school in Rome. This was the most different activity that is suitable for adults and children alike, the fun 2-hour lesson will teach you how to fight like a warrior of Ancient Rome, while learning about life in the imperial city, They let the kids dress up and fight with fake Roman weapons, and more.
👉🏻 Pizza and Tiramisu Cooking Class Near the Colosseum
This fun cooking class is a great activity for families because you will make authentic pizza and tiramisu from scratch guided by a local chef. This hands-on experience is the perfect way or enjoy a kid-friendly class with child-safe tools and a relaxed, playful vibe! They also offer wine and limoncello for the adults while you are cooking.
👉🏻 Pasta & Tiramisu Class with Free Flowing Fine Wine
If making pasta is more what you are looking for this is the best class to take! You will learn how to make handmade pasta and tiramisu from scratch at a family-run restaurant in Rome with wine. Then after you cook, you will end your experience by sitting down to a delicious 3-course meal.
👉🏻 Vatican & Sistine Chapel Skip-the-Ticket-Line Tour for Kids
This tour is a fun and informative tour of the Vatican that is designed for kids and families. Learn about classic sights like the Sistine Chapel and Renaissance masterpieces and you skip the line which is HUGE time saver with kids! This tour really makes seeing these things with kids fun!
👉🏻Colosseum and Roman Forum Tour for kids
Monuments, beauty, and fun; what more could you ask for in a tour? The tour adapted for children is the ideal way to complement play in a very educational manner through a "treasure hunt."
Day 1 in Rome with Kids
Morning & Early Afternoon
If you only do one thing in Rome with kids—make it this. The BEST Way to See Rome - especially with kids!
👉🏻 Book the Golf Cart Tour of Rome
This was hands down our favorite experience of the entire trip. Instead of walking 15,000+ steps (which honestly just isn’t realistic with kids), we explored Rome by golf cart and it was truly so much fun! You get to pick and choose what you want your guide to take you to see. Our kids didn’t complain once, which says everything about how great this truly is.
What we asked to to See: Colosseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. Then our guide added in some secret beautiful viewpoints + hidden gems like the
This was one of our favorite parts was the secret scenic spots our guide took us to! We would have never been able to find it on our own. Rome is built on 7 hills, so it is a LOT of walking. This tour lets you: see more, stay comfortable, keep kids happy & still experience the city in a meaningful way.
If you’re traveling with a mix of ages (we had kids ages 4-26 and adults up to 69), this is the easiest way to make everyone happy.
👉🏻 Read our full experience of the Golf Cart Tour!
We recommend doing this tour the first day you arrive. It is the best way to get an overview of the city and see where things are. Then you can kinda pick and choose what areas you like or what you want to go back to!
Then we went over to Villa Borghese park for the kids to run around and burn some energy off. This is one of our favorite things to do when in a big city - find and stay near the city parks.
Evening
🍕 Dinner: This ended up being one of the most fun meals of the trip! You do need a reservation! As it gets later it is harder to get a reservation but we managed to get one at 7pm and it was perfect, even with the kids. It is not cheap but I would say mid tier for prices but a little pricey for pizza.
Crazy Pizza Rome is not just dinner—it’s entertainment. Music playing, staff dancing and spinning pizza dough, lively, energetic atmosphere It’s loud, fun, and perfect for kids who don’t want to sit quietly through a long meal. The food was great, but the experience is what makes it worth it.
Then we walked around and got gelato before bed.
Day 2 in Rome with Kids
We started our second day by getting breakfast in our hotel. We had it included so it made the most sense but you can find lots of places nearby to get grab and go coffee and breakfast if thats what you prefer. We usually only like to have one true sit down meal per day when traveling with kids. It just works better for everyone and we usually make this dinner so thy are ready to sit by this point.
Morning
Start with a relaxed stroll through some of Rome’s most famous spots. You can walk to all of these from the hotels we recommended above! These are all relatively close together, so it’s an easy way to ease into the city without over planning. All of these are walkable to each other within 15 minutes or under between each stop.
Spanish Steps: Free to see and walk up or down and take pictures (we only saw the top from when we were on the golf cart)
Trevi Fountain: Free but you can pay €2 and go down to the bottom to get better pictures and avoid the crowd - VERY WORTH IT!
Pantheon: It is €5 to get in and wonder around and you can get a Digital Audio Guide in Multiple Languages! This is so beautiful and was worth it, even with kids.
Afternoon
🥪 Lunch: We loved stopping at Tre Scalini in Piazza Navona for a quick, easy lunch. It is only a 6 minute walk from the Pantheon. You do not need a reservation as you can just walk up. This restaurant has a great view of Fountain of the Four Rivers. They had a great selection for everyone. Including fresh sandwiches (this is what we got) pizza, pasta, salads, burgers, fries, gelato, etc. It was the perfect spot for the adults to rest in the beautiful piazza and the area is great for kids to move around a bit.
Then walk around Piazza Novena as this area has lots of shopping and if time and energy allows visit:
- Church of St Agnes
- Palazzo Braschi
Sandwiches from Tre Scalini were the best! We went back here a second time because the kids loved them so much and parents loved sitting on the iconic Piazza Navona square and people watching with a glass of wine while the kids ran around!
Best Rome with Kids Tip: Instead of the Sistine Chapel, Visit The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola instead!
Instead of paying to visit the Sistine Chapel with kids and have to wait in long lines and pay for a guided tour (which can run 55-75€ per person!), I recommend Visiting The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius instead if you have kids on your trip to Rome.
This is Church is FREE to enter, in a quiet piazza right around the corner from the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. There are almost no crowds compared to the Vatican, no security lines, no ticketing stress… and yet it has the same wow factor for kids. Actually, maybe even MORE of a wow factor as the ceiling contains an optical illusion that will truly fascinate kids.
You see, originally, the church was intended to have a real dome, but funding ran out during construction in 1642. Instead of leaving a flat, bare roof, Pozzo painted an incredibly detailed, 17-meter-wide dome on a canvas, which was then attached to the ceiling.
For the illusion to work perfectly, it must be viewed from a specific, precise location in the center of the nave, marked by a yellow marble disk on the floor. From this vantage point, the perspective aligns, and the ceiling looks like it extends into a soaring, three-dimensional structure.
This is only about a 30 minute activity and way better than 3-4 hours to see the Sistine Chapel when you are with kids who have limited patience for looking at art in chruches!
Some background of this place: The architect Pozzo visually stretched the church’s real architecture upward into the ceiling, making the basilica look twice as tall, then opened it into a vision of heaven with St. Ignatius lifted by angels while sinners fall. It’s one of the world’s largest frescoed vaults, over forty meters long. The main difference: Michelangelo painted scenes on a ceiling; Pozzo made the ceiling vanish. As you stand in different spots throughout the church, you’ll see the optical illusion and then it will break - really fun and fascinating for kids!
After all this excitement, I recommend heading back to the hotel and rest for a little before heading back out in the evening.
Evening
Wonder around! The best thing about being in a city like Rome is getting lost in the alleys and different streets with so much to see! We had a BIG group (14 people) as we met up with friends and their kids for the weekend and the only reservation for food we made was for Crazy Pizza. There are so many places to sit down and eat you can find a place without needing a reservation, especially if it's a more casual place like we did this night. We walked back towards the Trevi Fountain (because the first day we it was too crowded to try to get pictures) and we wondered around shops, stopped at a random restaurant and had pizza & pasta and then we got gelato and just walked around.
This is when we figured out THE BEST HACK to get great pictures at the Trevi Fountain!
Since they just started charging for you to go to get close, most people still don’t realize how cheap it actually is to do! Go around 8:30-8:45pm because they only let people in until about 8:55pm. Then as people start to leave you have the fountain to almost yourself until like 9:30pm!! The price is only 2 Euros per person and kids under 6 I believe were FREE. We got lots of pictures and videos and it was the best experience to be able to throw coins in together!
Day 3 in Rome with Kids
Morning
Sign the kids up for Gladiator School - This was such a fun experience for both kids and adults. You can watch your kids without having to pay for yourself too, yet still join in the fun and you’ll learn so much of the history behind the gladitors and more of the history of Rome too!
We had kids ages 4-16 who all enjoyed it! This is the best way to learn history about the Colosseum, Ancient Rome and Gladiators - WAY better than a museum.
👉🏻 Book the Gladiator School in Rome for Your Kids!
This was such a fun and memorable experience. Instead of just looking at the Colosseum, the kids actually got to step into the world of ancient Rome and learn a little bit about what Gladiators are and did.
What to Expect:
Dress up like a gladiator
Learn real techniques and fighting
Train with instructors
Hear stories about Roman history
It’s interactive, engaging, and one of those activities kids will talk about long after the trip. Our activity was about 2 hours long and was $140 per kid.
Afternoon
After gladiator school, it’s the perfect time to head to the Colosseum. It’s about a 15-20 minute cab ride away from the Gladiator school. But first have some lunch! After the Gladiator School the kids were super hungry so we stopped and grabbed some food before we had a tour of the inside of the Colosseum. You could choose to only visit the outside if you didn’t want to pay to go in, which is great for photo ops! The area right around the Colosseum is super touristy and busy - so we just grabbed some sandwiches - nothing fancy!
Even just seeing the Colosseum from the outside is incredible—but if your kids are up for it, you can also go inside. We recommend booking tickets in advance because especially on the weekends it can get very busy and they can sell out or you will wait in a very long line. Individual tickets to the Colosseum are about €18 per person. Guided tours of the Colosseum start at around €40 per person, depending on where you book. I recommend booking a guided “skip the line” tour.
👉🏻 Book a skip the line tour of the Colosseum
👉🏻Book a tour of the Colosseum with a Guided Audio App
After the Colosseum, you’ll want to spend some time wandering around the Roman Forum, which is a huge, central archaeological site in Rome situated between the Colosseum and Capitoline Hill. These ancient roman ruins are truly awe-inspiring and have some fascinating exhibits. But most importantly, they are a great place for kids to wander around and get some energy out while you enjoy soaking up the history you came to Rome for.
The Roman forums DO require a ticket but you can get a ticket that includes both the Colosseum and the Forum together.
👉🏻 Book the Roman Forum Tour
👉🏻 Book a tour of the Roman Forum and Colosseum
Other Optional Tours & Things to do:
If you have extra days or time before heading home, here are a few more ideas:
- Visit Rome catacombs - Best for older kids
- Attend a Rome Soccer Match. View the schedule here. Great for soccer fans!
- Visit the new cinema and amusement park in Rome, Cinecittà World - great for a summer trip in the heat
We were taking the train out of the city this evening, so we left around 4pm and it was perfect because the kids were just ready to sit and chill.
PRO TIPS:
- Skip paying to go into the Sistine Chapel long wait times and expensive (55-75€ per person) and visit The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius instead. This is FREE, in a quiet piazza near the Pantheon. There are no crowds, no security lines, no ticketing stress and has the same wow factor for kids.
- Visit the Trevi Fountain at night time and I don’t mean 3am (which is not practical with kids). Since you have to pay to get close to the fountain now 2€ PP, most people don’t realize how cheap it actually is. Go around 8:45pm as the security for the fountain stops letting people in around 8:50pm. Then as people started to clear out at 9:30ish we had the fountain almost to ourselves and got the greatest pictures!
- Book your tours ahead of time! The farther ahead you can plan for these the better for availability and planning. Another game changer is book the “skip-the-line” option of tours if you can. With kids, the less standing around before even getting to the activity the better!!
FAQ
Q: How many days do you need in Rome with kids?
A: We recommend spending 2–3 days in Rome with kids to see the main highlights without feeling rushed. A well-planned weekend itinerary allows you to visit iconic landmarks, enjoy great food, and include at least one kid-friendly experience.
Q: Is Rome stroller-friendly?
A: Rome can be challenging with a stroller due to cobblestone streets and uneven sidewalks. A lightweight travel stroller or carrier is often easier, especially if you plan to walk between attractions. We did take one out in the city the first day and it was okay but it’s annoying when the streets are busy and narrow.
Q: If we can only do one tour, what one would you choose?
A: Hands down the golf cart tour! It’s great for all ages, completely customizable and such a good way to see a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Even if you have been to Rome before you can ask the guides to take you to places that are hidden gems.
Q: When is the best time to visit Rome with kids?
A: The best times to visit Rome with kids are spring (April–June) and fall (September–October), when the weather is mild and crowds are more manageable. Summer can be very hot and crowded, which can be harder with younger children.
How do you avoid long lines in Rome with kids?
A: Planning ahead makes a huge difference!
Book tours and tickets in advance
Visit major attractions early in the morning or later in the day
Consider guided tours that include skip-the-line access
Q: What makes Rome fun for kids?
A: Rome can be fun for kids of all ages because it brings history to life. From ancient ruins to interactive experiences like gladiator school, plus gelato stops and open piazzas to explore, there are plenty of ways to keep kids engaged.
Q: Are there good kid-friendly food options in Rome?
A: Absolutely! It is the pasta and pizza capital of the world! There are so many easy options that are good for kids. You can also find amazing sandwich and grab and go options for kids. There is also gelato on almost every corner!
