Please sign in to post.

Best tours in Rome and Florence for kids?

Which tours do you recommend as best for kids? Last year, my husband and I did one with City Wonders that included the underground, third ring and the forum and Palentine hill. I'm not terribly interested in spending three hours doing that again, but do you think the kids would get enough out of the colosseum without a guided tour? Should we try to do a self guided audio tour perhaps? My husband and I did RS's heart of Rome self guided walking tour last year just using the guide book and it was easy to follow and fantastic. We plan to do that again with the kids.

We will have two full and two half days in Rome and 1-1/2 days in Florence. I'm trying to decide what tours would be most interesting to the kids, ages 9, 14 and 16. For other activities, I've talked to a few cooking schools, a gladiator school, and a sketching tour for budding artists. I'm wondering if an evening tour that shows us the buildings lit up for night would be cool, or if we could easily do that on our own too.

I want to let the kids get plenty of info without being burned out. Would a 3-hour Vatican and Sistine chapel tour be too much? Is it worth paying extra for the early VIP entry? I'm going to do one expensive tour, around 500 euros for all of us, and a couple of 250-300 euro tours, and I am trying to figure out the best way to spend my hard-earned money. I've roughly budgeted 1000 euros for tours. We're also going to Venice, but that definitely seems doable on our own. Altho in each city, the food tours sound pretty cool. So maybe one of those somewhere.

There's a walking tour of Florence that lasts for four hours and hits the highways that sounds interesting for 250 euros for all of us. Must pay our own tickets into academia and iffui thomwhich gets expensive. Wondering if that is a good choice or if we should just tour Florence's in our own, we're staying in sight of the duomo.

Any thoughts?

Posted by
8809 posts

Florence is easy to see on your own. I have been there twice and we walked all over the city.

On my last time there, My Wife and I did a fun bike tour around the city that was excellent. It was not strenuous, but we saw quite a lot of the city in just a few hours.

Don't miss Accademia and David.

Also, I have been to Rome twice and the first time my 7 year old Son was in awe of the Sistine Chapel. We sat on the floor and looked carefully at the frescoes. We didn't want to leave.

Posted by
131 posts

Thanks so much for your response! We stopped briefly in Florence on a whirlwind tour last year that included Pisa and Lucca, so we didn't get to see much, but my sense of it was that it was easily walkable. I booked our airbnb apartment close to the Duomo because that seemed like a central location to be able to walk to many things.

My youngest goes to Catholic school and he can't wait to see the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. He's told everyone he's going to meet the pope. Ummm...well...not exactly...

Posted by
17058 posts

Scully, I think your kids can get plenty out of the Colosseum without a tour but there are a couple of inexpensive options:

If all of you have mobile devices, you can download Rick's audioguide for free:
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/audio-tours/italy

Coopculture offers € 5.00 tours of the main arena. It doesn't include the underground but really, I think the kids will be plenty impressed without that. These have to be reserved by phone:

http://www.coopculture.it/en/colosseo-e-shop.cfm

I'm wondering if an evening tour that shows us the buildings lit up
for night would be cool, or if we could easily do that on our own too.

You can easily do this on your own. I wouldn't spend the $$ on a tour.

Must pay our own tickets into academia and iffui (Uffizi) thomwhich
gets expensive.

You know that you will only be paying for adult tickets for both, right? Your kids are all under 18 so will be free; bring IDs for your older children for proof of age. Same with the Colosseum.

Wondering if that is a good choice or if we should just tour
Florence's in our own,

1.5 days is not very much time so you're only going to be able to do so much. Florence is reasonably compact so I'd do it on your own with a guidebook; no need for a tour. I'd say the same for Rome: your time is limited so be cautious not to over-plan activities.

Would a 3-hour Vatican and Sistine chapel tour be too much?

That depends on how interested your kids are going to be in what it offers? Are they really into art of will they get enough of that in Florence? If you definitely plan to do the Vatican, I might book the 3-hour combo tour of the museums and basilica offered through the Vatican's website. A quick test booking brings up a cost of 161,00 € total for the 5 of you. The bonus is being able to enter St. Pete's directly from the museums without a long walk between them and standing in another security queue.

In general, it sounds like you already have plenty sunk into tours so I would go easy on adding any more. The nice thing about self touring is that if the young people get to a point when they've had enough, you're not out anything if everyone needs a break.

Another tactic to keep them engaged? Have them do some of the research. They're all old enough to learn to do the sorts of digging it takes to put a trip together. Colosseum? Put your 3 kids in charge of being the tour guides; have them go to library and online to gather information to share. Have them look at some guidebooks for other things they'd like to see, and have them choose a couple. You probably don't need a cooking class or gladiator school at all! Involving them in the planning will likely help them connect on a different level when they get there. They'll also learn how to be great travelers when it's time to create their own adventures someday!

Posted by
50 posts

This is our first trip out of the country so I am attempting to make it psychologically gentle for my boys, ages 12, 13 and 14. Add in the fact that with 5 of us, a private tour is nominally priced compared to 'out of the box' tours.

Like you, we asked all of these questions and our kids (well, you know ... one in particular) was worried we would spend our entire trip in museums and churches. We are only going to Rome and Florence, but we hired Rome Tours with Kids and for Florence, they have an office called Pinocchio Tours which offers a city and uffizi tour. I like that they will tailor our information for our age kids. We are doing the gladiator school then the tour. We are also doing one cooking class. I also like that the tours are 3 hours a day and a bit more active than a traditional tour based on your child's age. We ended up booking a Vatican and a colosseum tour in Rome then a city tour in Florence. From there, we made our own plans to visit sites.

We don't leave for another week...so I can't tell you how all this worked out ;-) But, I am happy with our decisions thus far. Most days, we plan to only spent half a day enjoying sites, the rest will be doing our best to live like a local.

Posted by
4105 posts

Sculls here is the Rome tour.

http://www.romefreewalkingtour.com

It's purely a walking tour, the plus is you have someone to guide you thru the streets to (you pick) the end destination.
Some good info along the way.

Agree with the above poster, use the official Vatican site for Sistine and St Peters. Pick date and time then book these online.

Colosseum official site for complete tour. Kids will be free, guide 5E each, underground purchased separately.

When your kids are older is when I would purchase more expensive tours.