Our Pilgrimage to the Imperial City: Highlights of Three Days in Rome with Kids

"When in Rome, live as the Romans do; when elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere" - Saint Ambrose

I've gotten very behind in my blogging, with good excuse, we are now living in Croatia, settling into our apartment, meeting with our lovely family there and enjoying this amazing place. We expected our time here to be three months of rest and recuperation but the next month looks very full, in fact we are currently not in Croatia at all but in Budapest. But more of that later its time for me to finish telling you about our wonderful time in Italy.

We found Rome to be a terrific place to visit with kids. Of course we had to modify the usual tourist itinerary a little as a long wait at the Vatican museums for example would have been too much to expect. After our three days the kids both said they would like to come back again, despite three days of "tourist stuff" and no days spent by a pool.

We had a terrific apartment in Via Marmorata, in a residential area not far from the Colosseum (VRBO 23739). It had great bus links and with the help of Google Maps we easily planned our days out using the bus and tram network.

We took advantage of the Roma Pass, which gave us free public transport for three days and free entry into two tourist attractions, including skipping the queue at the Colosseum, and discounted entry into any other sites. For the kids transport and the museums are free anyway and it was brilliant to be able jump on a bus, even for just one stop, to save our feet.

And so here is my highlights package of three fabulous days in Rome with kids. You will find that the Trevi Fountain is missing as it was closed for maintenance which was a real shame. We also visited the Spanish Steps which in all honesty didn't thrill the kids overly and so I have left it out.

Hard Rock Café

Okay this was an unexpected one I'm sure and was completely unplanned, we simply got off at the wrong bus stop and were waiting for the next bus when I pointed out the Hard Rock Cafe to Emma. We were on our way to the Villa Borghese to eat lunch somewhere having just arrived that morning on the train from Foligno.

Emma made a comment about it sounding fun so we thought why not? It was loud and crowded, the food was pretty awful, the homemade lemonade with strawberries and basil was delish and overall it was great fun.
 

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

We visited the modern art gallery with only one painting in my mind, Klimt's Three Ages of Women. After Julian's birth a good friend gave us a congratulation card that bore this image and I always keep this card on display at home as I feel that it is truly one of the most beautiful works of art I have seen.

In the flesh it definitely did not disappoint and even the kids enjoyed seeing it. We also found two works by Van Gough, or as Emma said "they are like that guy from St Remy" and I couldn't argue with that. We also enjoyed an installation that was comprised of a huge floor made of broken glass which visitors could walk over to view the sculptures placed on it. The kids enjoyed sitting on the floor studying their reflections but were chased off by one of the docents, I assume due to the risk of cutting themselves.  

I really enjoyed a painting showing Italian people waiting on the docks for a ship that would take them across the world, perhaps to Fremantle like so many of our friends and family who came to make a new life in a distant land.

 Villa Borghese

Villa Borghese is a kids paradise with so much to see and do and was probably the highlight of Rome for them and so we went a couple of times. For our first visit we went to the zoo as part of a deal made with the kids  ("after we visit the gallery for mummy we will go to the zoo right next door and see the bears").

 We are spoiled in Perth as our zoo is fantastic, no small cages or concrete jungles in sight and while the zoo in Rome did have something of a cringe factor it also had amazing animals we don't have at home. The kids were thrilled to see the bears, hippos and the chimpanzees.

 On our second visit we hired a pedal car and went in search of all the beautiful fountains and playgrounds. Luckily as you pedal you save power to a battery that in turn helps you to pedal up hills. So with the boys wanting to go faster and the girls wanting to go slower we still managed to cover a lot of ground in this beautiful oasis.

Colosseum and the Roman Forum

The Flavian Amphitheatre, to give the Colosseum its correct name, is of course a not to be missed experience in Rome. We decided to tempt fate and join a tour so as not to miss anything. Luckily it was short and kept moving so that by the time Julian got bored of all the talking we moved on and so we managed to stick with it for the whole tour.

 

I'm glad we took the tour as we learnt much we never knew before such it taking five hundred slaves in the underground labyrinth to keep the show running. Only during the games staged at the grand opening, which lasted a hundred days, was the stage area flooded in order to stage battles on boats. This was impossible once the under stage area was completed.

Also it came as a surprise that the games were not a regular event, happening only at the whim of the emperor who provided the funding, staging the games to leave the citizens in no doubt as to the might of Rome. On a day when games were staged there were three events, hunting in the morning, punishing criminals in the middle of the day and gladiator battles in the evening.

In the morning the stage was transformed into a forest where teams of hunters aimed to kill exotic animals from the far flung reaches of the empire. Next came the public executions of the criminals who were dispatched in all manner of creative ways (enter the Christians and the lions). Lastly the gladiators provided the most popular event.

The gladiators could become superstars, though they were highly valuable slaves. More often than not their lives were spared as they were very expensive to replace. Gladiators were trained in one type of combat and they were pitted against an opponent trained in another form of combat and they never battled against animals. Also it is unlikely that chariots ever raced here as chariot racing took place at venues such as the Circus Maximus.

We did take a wander through the Roman Forum but as it was a fairly warm day and we were pretty tired we did not do it justice. Having been on the road at this stage for nine weeks we were slowly beginning to loose the drive to keep up the regular tourist pace.

Campo di Fiori and Piazza Navona

The Campo di Fiori was a simple bus ride from our apartment, or would have been had the buses arrived that we planned to take and so it took an hour when it was supposed to take fifteen minutes. This whole area dedicated was to trade during the middle ages, as shown by the fabulous road names (road of crossbow makers, road of hatmakers etc).

We stopped for a pastry at i dolci di Nonna Vincenza, a delicious pasticceria tipica Siciliana, which was an exellent choice. Sadly for Julian he dropped his and then when we bought another he didn't like it anyway which was luck for us as we got to share it.

The Campo di Fiori is a  market place filled with stalls selling wonderful produce and typical Italian products such as pasta. Julian enjoyed a fresh juice , squeezed from pomegranate and orange which was a surprise hit.

Nearby Piazza Navona is a brilliant place for kids, with space to run around, beautiful fountains and one of Rome's many obelisks.

The Romans were great collectors and there are eight ancient Egyptian obelisks in Rome as well as five created in Egypt during the Roman period, like the one on display in the Piazza Navona. The obelisk standing in St Peters Square is the only one still standing having never fallen since the Roman period.

We had a lot of fun playing up for the camera, with Rob burning his hands on hot cobblestones whilst doing handstands and Emma and Julian staging funny photos with the fountains.

Pantheon

It was wonderful to be able to visit a perfectly preserved Roman Temple even if today it is a Christian church. The Pantheon dominants its Piazza like a crouched beast waiting to pounce. Outside under the portico was a great place to enjoy the shade and a gelato from one of the many cafes in the area, while ignoring the street vendors attempting to sell us all sorts of things.

Inside our attention was drawn immediately to the beam of light entering through the hole in the dome, the oculus. When I first went in alone, as the gelato eating was taking a while, the sun light shone directly on a statue in an alcove though by the time Rob and the kids arrived it had moved on to a place higher up and further around the wall. The kids were fascinated with the beam of light and Emma called it the clock, which I found quite an apt description of this reverse sundial effect.

St Peter's Basilica

We had decided not to visit the Sistine Chapel due to the amount of queuing, waiting and crowding involved in passing through the Vatican Museums and the fact that Rob and I have both been before, though we would have loved to go back, as the Raphael rooms are simply wonderful. We decided however that we should visit St Peter's Basilica particularly as I was keen to see Michelangelo's Pieta.

When we left home that morning we intended to return again to get changed before visiting St Peters, as the weather was quite warm Emma and I were sleeveless though both wearing long skirts. By the time we had passed through the long queues at the security point it suddenly occurred to us that we had not gotten changed and we found many women who had failed the appropriate clothing test standing around looking dejected. After such a long wait we were kicking ourselves, especially after having never having forgotten this sign of respect before.

Faced with rejection I thought back to other churches we had seen around Europe who offered wraps or paper or plastic ponchos and in desperation created one from a plastic bag, but alas we were rejected. Luckily we were surreptitiously approached by a women who dealt in scarves, and with much giggling we bought our illegal scarves for only 5euro each and just quietly I would have paid more not to miss out. 

And so disaster averted we went into the Basilica and decided to save the Pieta until last due to the huge milling crowd. The kids were morbidly impressed with the preserved popes in glass cases though Emma didn't believe they were real. There were many wonderful sculptures and we started playing a game whereby we would guess what each one had to say which was cause for much giggling.

"Quick lets grab it and run before someone sees us"

After spending some time exploring St Peter's splendour we made our way to the Pieta and luckily we were able to get a front row centre view of this masterpiece. Last time I was in Rome I visited San Pietro in Vincoli and saw Michelangelo's Moses which was simply incredible, and sadly closed at the time we visited this week, and though you could not get up close to his Pieta you could still see even the smallest detail.

And it is there that I leave our travels in Italy. The plan for the next stage of our odyssey was a solid month of laying on the beach in Makarska, Croatia, where Rob part owns a family home we have never seen. But as with all great plans it went out the window as my mother in law suggested we meet her at the end of a cruise she was taking from Amsterdam to Budapest and who could resist such a request. So it has been a very fully month and I shall endeavour to share it with you in fine detail over the next couple of weeks.

Date of visit to Rome 17th - 20th August 2014