Rome with Kids: An Insider's Guide

by J.M. Pasquesi

Award winning Rome with Kids is a complete travel guide, with or without kids!Scrambling around ruins; exploring underground excavations; searching for gladiators, secret passageways, ancient lie detectors, and creepy skeletons; feasting on pizza and gelato-Rome with kids is a dream.[p] Revel in the glory of Roman Civilization without hearing I'm bored! as an insider guides you through Rome with field-tested tours that tell you what to see and how to see it with children. Each sight will come to life with bite-sized stories, fun activities, and compelling treasure hunts.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

237 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

Reviews

[SteveRrread · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful, well designed, fun family guide to Rome. We enjoyed referring to the book when visiting Rome. Thanks to the book, we had a memorable holiday over there.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

We've just returned from a one-week tour of Rome with our four kids, ages 14, 10, 7, and 2. This book really did a phenomenal job of providing information to help us prepare for our trip, and guide our kids through the various sites while we were there. And the writing and recommendations were appropriate for all three of our older kids. (Our toddler was pretty much along for the ride, which we knew from the get-go. But because the book outlines which sites have open "romp around" areas, we were able to time our excursions to include much-needed playtime for a very active toddler. So in that sense, anyway, this guide was great for his age-range as well.)

Though we also had Rick Steves's guide in hand, Pasquesi's book was our primary guide for our trip, and we managed to hit nearly all of the key sites Pasquesi recommends. Our kids really enjoyed checking them off as we went. It's a good-sized guide and not too big to carry around, which is nice, but I do wish the author had provided just a bit more historical context for some of the site. The amusing anecdotes are great for helping the kids relate, but a bit more context would really help to bring it home for them.

My only other complaint is that the layout was sometimes a bit difficult to follow. The guide seems to jump back and forth between sites at times, making it rather confusing as to where you are and what you're looking at. (To this point, I spent quite a bit of time with my nose buried in the index, trying to piece together information about the Baths at Caracalla, for example, from sections in three different sub-chapters in the guide.) I suppose this was meant to show the interconnectivity of some of the sites, but I just found it to require more page turning than I would have liked.

That said, this was a great tool for us to have with us when visiting Rome's most popular sites. The only glaring thing the guide missed is a recommendation for Come Il Latte, which is hands-down the best place for gelato in all of Rome. Go there. Seriously. And then visit the sites in the rest of this book. ;)

[Signe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as much a 'What to see in Rome with Kids' but more a 'How to see Rome with Kids' it is a guide to exploring the city at your kids' pace. We found it very useful on our first ever visit to Rome, and also learned a few insider bits about the city that weren't mentioned in the grown-ups' guide books. Highly recommended.

[Lonica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had higher hopes for this book, but all in all, it wasn't worth hauling to Europe and back. I hardly even touched it.