Italy with kids

One ticket covers all three, twenty-four dollars. The Forum is the part that needs explaining; the Colosseum explains itself.

Four kilometres of corridor before you reach the chapel, and it is shoulder to shoulder. Book the earliest slot you can get.

Seven dollars, and the dome climb is 551 steps with a narrow, sloping final section. The basilica floor is free to enter.

Nearly two thousand years old with a hole open to the sky, and it rains straight in. Twelve dollars and twenty minutes.

A cylindrical fortress with a spiral ramp, a secret passage to the Vatican and a terrace over the river. More castle-shaped than anything else in Rome.

The she-wolf, the giant marble hand and foot, and a terrace over the Forum. Thirty-seven dollars.

A glass lift to the roof of the Vittoriano, and the best view of the Forum from above. Forty-two dollars and five minutes' effort.

Rome's port town, as complete as Pompeii and with a fraction of the visitors. Half an hour on the train and twenty-one dollars.

The zoo inside the Villa Borghese gardens, thirty dollars. The relief valve after three days of ruins.

Working models built from the notebooks, and most of them can be touched. Nineteen dollars.

A multimedia half hour on how the city grew, twenty-two dollars. Genuinely useful on day one before you see any of it.

A gladiator-themed park on the edge of the city where children train with wooden swords. Silly, cheap and squarely aimed at them.

Nine dollars to see the Roman water channels below the fountain. The fountain above is free and permanently three deep.

Hire a little electric cart and drive the park yourself. Twenty-nine dollars, and it rescues an afternoon of tired legs.

The original Roman road, closed to traffic on Sundays, with tombs and aqueducts either side. Forty-six dollars for the bike.

Twenty-one dollars, and Rome's sights are further apart than the map suggests. Good on a first day.

An hour on the river under the bridges with something to drink. A calm end to a day of walking.

Make it, then eat it. Sixty-four dollars, and it is the class children ask to do again.

A choice of the city's paid attractions on one ticket. Check it covers the Colosseum slot you actually want before buying.

A long day south and back by coach. Better done from Naples if you have the nights — this is the version for a Rome-only trip.

Cathedral, baptistery and museum on one ticket, thirty-four dollars. The bronze baptistery doors are the thing to stop at.

Botticelli's Venus and a corridor of Renaissance masters. Big, and an hour with a plan beats three without one.

David is seventeen feet tall and the photographs do not prepare you. Thirty-four dollars, and forty minutes is enough.

The old town hall, with a tower to climb and secret passages behind the walls. Thirty-seven dollars.

The gardens are the point with children — terraces, grottoes and space to run, which the city centre has none of.

Machines built from the drawings, and you turn the handles. Twelve dollars and the best-value hour in Florence.

An enormous model landscape with running trains, built over fifteen years. Twenty-one dollars and quite unexpected here.

463 steps between the two shells of the dome, narrow and one-way. Extraordinary, and genuinely not for the claustrophobic.

Twenty-seven dollars. Florence is small enough to walk, so this mainly buys the hill up to Piazzale Michelangelo.

Stretch the dough, churn the gelato, eat both. Fifty-two dollars and it works on almost any age.

An hour west for the tower, the cathedral and the obligatory photograph. Half a day is plenty.

Pisa, San Gimignano, Siena and Chianti with the driving handled. A lot of hill towns for one day — good for older children.

Five cliff villages linked by train and boat, two and a half hours away. Steps everywhere and very crowded in summer.

The Uffizi, Accademia and the Duomo complex on one card. Works out only if you are doing all three, which most people are.

Gilded state rooms, then the Bridge of Sighs and the prison cells at the other end. The contrast is the lesson.

Eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic. Thirty-two dollars with skip-the-line, and the queue outside is long.

A lift to the top of the bell tower, twenty-nine dollars. No stairs, which after three days of Italy matters.

A thousand years of glassmaking, seventeen dollars, on the island itself. Pairs with the boat trip.

Eight dollars, and the older women still demonstrating the stitches are the exhibit.

A self-guided tour of the theatre that has burned down and been rebuilt three times. Fourteen dollars.

Modern art in a one-storey palazzo on the Grand Canal, with a sculpture garden. Under-tens go free.

Vivaldi played in a church in the city he wrote it in. Thirty-seven dollars and about an hour.

Thirty minutes on the side canals, shared so it is forty-nine dollars a head rather than a private fortune. Do it once.

A boat to the glass island and the painted-house island, with a glass-blowing demonstration. Thirty-five dollars and the best half day here.

A day out on the lagoon with lunch, away from the crowds entirely. Seventy dollars.

Lake Misurina and Cortina, two hours north. A long day, and the mountains are a complete change from the lagoon.

Cathedral, museum and archaeological area for thirteen dollars — the cheapest great cathedral in Italy.

A proper moated castle with towers and a large park behind it. Twenty-three dollars and space to run.

Fifteen minutes in front of it, in groups, and that is the rule. Book months ahead or accept you will not see it.

Dinosaur skeletons and dioramas, nineteen dollars, in the Giardini Indro Montanelli. The child-shaped half of Milan.

Working reconstructions of the machines, next to the Duomo. Nineteen dollars and hands-on throughout.

A 1930s steel tower in Parco Sempione with a lift to the top, and seven dollars. The cheapest view in Italy.

The opera house and its museum, fifty-five dollars. Short, and better for a child who plays an instrument.

Both museums on one ticket, fifty-one dollars, an hour and a half east. The single best day out from Milan for a car-minded child.

The aquarium beside Italy's biggest theme park on Lake Garda, and ten dollars. Worth knowing if you are going to Gardaland anyway.

You walk among the spires and statues on the roof itself. Lift or stairs, and it is the thing children remember about Milan.

Both Milan clubs share it, and the tour takes in the dressing rooms and the pitch. Forty-five dollars.

Twenty-two dollars. Milan's sights are scattered and the metro is good, so this is optional rather than essential.

An hour north, then a boat across to Bellagio. Mountains straight out of the water, and a gentle day.

The Duomo and ten-plus attractions on one card, forty-six dollars. Decent value on a two-day stop.

A whole Roman town with streets, shops, graffiti and the plaster casts of the dead. Take the guide — without it, it is walls.

Everything portable from Pompeii ended up here, including the mosaics. Do it before the site, not after.

A nineteenth-century royal escape tunnel used as a wartime shelter, full of abandoned cars. Seventeen dollars and genuinely atmospheric.

A star-shaped fort on the hill with the whole bay and Vesuvius laid out below. Sixteen dollars.

State rooms and a court theatre on the main square, twenty-seven dollars. Quiet, and an easy indoor morning.

Round trip from Naples for twenty-three dollars, if you would rather buy the site ticket separately and go at your own pace.

Thirty-one dollars. Naples traffic is famously chaotic and this is the calm way through it.

The ruins in the morning, then up the volcano that buried them. The crater walk is loose gravel and steeper than it looks.

Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi along a cliff road with a thousand bends. Car sickness is a real risk — sit forward and open a window.

A boat across the bay, a chairlift up Monte Solaro and the Blue Grotto if the sea allows. It often does not — the grotto closes on swell.