10 day trip to Italy over Christmas

What interests you? What are your first blush bucket list items? Big cities and attractions or small towns and atmosphere? Museums, art, local color, food, warm weather or snow?

Traveling during holiday periods can be tricky. Unless you opt for the extended time, I would advise Rome and just one other destination. Be super careful about checking open times for any attractions that interest you.
Dec. 26 is also a holiday, so you need to factor that into your plans. Also, allow plenty of time for getting restaurant reservations on the holiday evenings.

Rome has a lot of attractive areas to wander around in if you run into days when it seems everything is closed. Those include Trastevere and the Art Nouveau Quartiere Coppede. In addition, Rome is blessed with dozens and dozens of interesting churches, often open every day of the week, though they may close for part of the afternoon or (smaller ones, especially) not be open after the lunch break. You'll have to be flexible since there may be extra services on religious holidays, and you really shouldn't be sightseeing inside a church during a mass.

We just got home from being in Venice for the 10 nights before Christmas and in Rome for four nights starting on New Years Eve (Bologna in between). We've been in both cities around these holidays for a week or so on previous trips, too. No trouble finding great places to eat, but grocery stores tended to be closed, as well as some museums, etc. Both cities are excellent for being interesting just to walk around in, so you just plan your days that way. Both are great for teenagers, too. See what you think about flying into Venice and out of Rome, with a day trip by train to Orvieto from Rome, and if you really want to, a day trip by train to Padua or Bologna or Ferrara or Verona or Treviso from Venice. Having two home bases plus a day trip or two will prevent you from feeling "break-neck." I guess that to do this plan, and still be in Rome on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, you'd need to fly in earlier than December 21st --- can you do that?

Hi there, Sounds like you're arriving Dec 21, which means if you left on Dec 30th, you only have 8 days on the ground as arrival and departure days are usually a waste. So, if you can stay until January 2nd, do so! If I were planning this trip, I would rent an apartment in central Rome with 2 teens and stay put. A travel day from somewhere else is a waste & changing hotels is a hassle. Agree with others, so many outdoor fun things to do & see such as churches & ruins, even when many things are closed. You can easily go to Ostia Antica (30 min by train out of Rome) or Tivoli (amazing gardens & Hadrian's Villa) 35 min by train. Someone else mentioned Orvietto, a cathedral town north of Rome. PLENTY to do!! BTW if you really want to go to the Vatican Museums, which will be jammed, consider an early bird 7:30AM tour, offered by the Vatican and others.

I just wrote a trip report about our NY 2023, 8 day visit to Rome, where we've been a number of times, it might give you some ideas. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/rome-was-jammed-over-ny-but-still-fun.

If you DM me, I have a very long list of restaurants & places that would be open Christmas Day & NY day I put together for our trip. Good luck!

Thank you so much for your replies. My husband is a teacher, so we are confined to his work schedule unfortunately. We were planning on taking a summer trip for 2-3 weeks, but my son had conflicting plans. So, we are trying to make it work for Christmas break. It isn't as long of a trip as we would like, but we want to make it special with our kids. I'll see what we can do on any time extension and would love all the advice on restaurants that would be open for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Thank you again for taking the time to respond to my question.

If he has to be at work on Jan 3, I would fly out Jan 1. Sometimes flights are cancelled and people get home a day later than planned.

Hi, I found Katie's list of places open on Sundays & holidays to be useful when planning, but I would check each place on Google as well. Google was often more up to date than their websites. Dec 31st dinners are almost always a set, 3-course meal that will be more pricey. We chose to eat a nice lunch out & just get takeaway pizza that evening. https://katieparla.com/eating-in-rome-on-a-sunday/

https://katieparla.com/where-to-eat-in-rome-christmas-new-year/

Sent a private message - recommend staying only in Rome and then doing a day trip (or two) near/at the end of the trip to break things up. At least in my case (3 teens) we allowed for a lot of later starts (10:00+ breakfast in VRBO, then we would head out) and that was great so they could sleep and we weren’t rushed. Didn’t do tickets for anything any earlier than 11 and it worked great.

New Year’s Eve in Italy was great so recommend staying and leaving on 1/1. A lot is closed on 1/1- so makes sense to travel home that day (vs 1/2).

Note the time between Christmas and new years is a very busy time.tourists and locals alike. Book restaurants in advance and get reservations for Christmas dinner/lunch. We booked at a really nice hotel.