Italy Itinerary?

With 14 nights in country you can easily base in Venezia and Roma and do day trips to see surrounding areas. I like a stay of a week in a place instead of moving around all the time. Best use of time, IMO. And renting an apartment for a week is absolutely the way to go.

Instead of staying in Naples, you can see Pompeii in a day trip. It is a long day trip but beats changing location if the major objective is only to see Pompeii and perhaps the archeological museum in Naples. The Rick Steves guide has all the details on doing such a day trip by train.

Great day trips from Rome: Ostia Antica, Orvieto, Tivoli, Sperlonga (beach). From Venice: Verona, Padova, the islands of the lagoon.

If you take Laurel's advice, consider Ostia Antica instead of Pompeii. Pompeii is a long, hard day. There will be lots of people, hot sun, little shade, some of the streets are very difficult to walk on, and it's a long, pricey trip to get there. Ostia is not nearly as extensive, but it's a short local train ride from Rome, and can be combined easily with an afternoon at the nearby beach.

Venice is not a very easy place for day trips. If you look at the train schedules, it sounds good, but if you aren't staying very near the train station, it is likely to be up to an hour by vaporetto from your apartment, or a good 1/2 hour walk (if you don't get lost). That also means a long walk home at the end of a long day. I'd limit the stay there to 3 nights.

If you want to keep costs down, consider 3-5 nights in Bologna. It's not a big tourist city, so prices are likely to be lower. You can take local trains on day trips to explore the surrounding towns - Padua, Modena, Ferrara are just a few, even Ravenna with its 5th-6th century churches and mosaics is a reasonable day trip.

Chani beat me to it. Bologna also has a leaning tower (2, 1 can be climbed, I think). And there is a beach near Ravenna.
I would suggest flying to Italy immediately from Paris, spend a few nights in Venezia, split the rest among Bologna, Roma, and Paris.

We have two kids similar ages to yours. We recently spent a week in Bologna as a base and loved it. Ferrara, beaches, day trip to Venice, Modena. Low stress.

I'd also highly recommend a week in Lucca, where we have also gone with our kids. 2italia has great family apartments. Lucca is so much fun for kids with the fortified wall, ice cream, bike riding and playgrounds. Day trips to Pisa and Cinque Terre.

You might even consider to take the train from Paris to Italy. The kids might like the adventure, and you'll probably appreciate the relaxation of a train. The high-speed TGV brings you in some 6 hours to Turin or 7 to Milan. When bought well in advance at www.voyages-sncf.com/, tickets for the five of you can be as cheap as EUR 179.

Add Ravenna to your Venice list as someone earlier suggested, great Byzantine art. And I would concur on 2 places with day trips. When I've done it that way I'm much happier. Have fun with your kiddos!

I loved Ravenna, which has a very pretty historic district, but it's three hours from Venice by train, so perhaps a bit far for a day-trip unless your entire family is excited about the (glorious) medieval mosaics. It could be done, but I'm not sure the children would appreciate the trek. It's less than half as long a trip from Bologna.

The idea of simply splitting the time between Venezia and Roma and doing day trips from those two locations appears to be the most hassle free. It also eliminate a lot of "lost" time spent going from one base to another. Time spent getting from the apt. to the train stations will not, imo, be as great as actually changing locations.