First trip to Rome - what tours to do and what to do ourselves? Recommendations please.

If you want to see the Sistine Chapel, I would recommend The Pristine Sistine tour if you can get it. Your girls will need to walk fats , but you will avoid most of the crowds. Dont know about a tour, but going to the roof of St Peters is amazing.
Dad and I enjoyed the hop on hop off bus as well

The Sistine Chapel and Vatican museum may not be that exciting for the girls since it is enclosed and often very, very crowded. When you are short, you don't see much. I would focus on the outdoor items. We have used Angel Tours for guided tours. I would think that some guided tours would hold their attention depending on interests.

This might be a tour the kids would like.

https://www.getyourguide.com/rome-l33/rome-bike-tour-with-food-tasting-t43546/?referrer_view_id=7027f17a902ad8f88584dd49c5e159e6&referrer_view_position=9

For Pisa making class

http://pinocchiotours.com/pizzamakingclassforkidsinrome.html

It may be late to book private guide, but someone like Sonia Tavoletta ([email protected]) can make the sights come alive. The Colosseum and Forum can be very confusing, so using a pro who has stories and knows how to keep kids engaged is very worthwhile.

The Piazza Navona area is a great place to stay, I was staying in the area last fall... you will walk to Piazza Navona probably 8 minutes or so from where you are and from there Trevi Fountain the Pantheon are another 5 minutes, about 12 minutes to the Spanish steps..You can see all 4 of these in 2-2.5 hours even if you are taking time out to take photos and stop for snacks...Also so make sure you see these again at night ..Trastevere is about a 15-20 minute walk from Piazza Navona itself.

A night time tour by bus is always a good thing, to see it all lit up. I recommend this on your first night if you can keep the troops awake, a good way to ensure they fight the jet lag by staying up until 10 or so on the first night.

The Gladiator tour seems to be popular for kids. Hop on hop off bus and nighttime bus tour should be enough between your own walking, museums and churches. You may not want to lock into a tour until you see how everyone is doing with jetlag and weather other changes.

I don't think kids get bored AS easily in Rome as they do other places, due to the architecture alone being a feast for the eyes, plus pizza and gelato and you have happy kids. I strongly recommend taking the mid afternoon break like Italian's do in order to refresh..and since you are staying in Centro Storico this is easy, even a 1.5 hour refresher at the hotel can work wonders for grumpy tired/jet lagged little ones. Rome will still be there in an hour! :)

When visiting the Colosseum during the day, even if you arrrive by car or bus or whatever, enter the train station via main entrance directly across from Colosseum and go up stairs to the exit at the top of the station..this provides sweeping views over the entire site...and there is a big good cafe with bathrooms.

Make sure everyone hits the bathroom on the way into the Colosseum because there is only ONE and it is on the main level, you will wait a long time to enter and they make you dump or if waiting awhile most will drink their water...you won't want to walk all the way back down again to use the bathroom I learned the hard way :) bummer!

Enjoy!

Thanks so much.