The best things to do in Rome with tweens: fun ideas, attractions and activities in Rome your tweens will love and practical tips on the best places to stay in Rome with tweens [Updated March 2026].
Rome is a wonderful city to visit with kids of any age.
However, there is no doubt that some ages find more to do in Rome than others and one of these ages are the tween years.
My children are now tweens and I can tell you: Rome with tweens is a real treat!
The city has a lot to offer to them and while no two tweens are alike, there is such a variety of activities, attractions and classes for them, I am pretty sure you will find at least a few things your tweens will love, whatever their personality and personal taste may be.
In other articles, I shared a long selection of things to do in Rome with kids of all ages.
In this post, I focus on the best things to do in Rome with tweens (age 9 -12).
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Take a vespa sidecar tour around Rome
One of the most enjoyable, thrilling (but not scary) and exciting things we have done in Rome with tweens is a vespa sidecar tour with driver.
The tours is FANTASTIC. The vespa and sidecar is comfortable, large and safe and your guide brings you around the city covering a lot of ground and showing you a large number of landmarks and viewpoints.
The tour is super fun and with the breeze on your face truly pleasant! One adult and one kid per vespa, adult on the saddle and the chid in the sidecar. You can see info and book here.
Visit the Colosseum
It may sound like an obvious suggestions but really: the Colosseum is one of the best attractions for tweens in Rome.
The size of the Amphitheater, the stories it tells and the sheer magnificence of the views from inside it are all it takes to get a tween excited and engaged.
There are several ways to visit the Colosseum with children, ways I have detailed in my guide to the Colosseum with kids here.
However, there are two ways that I believe are best for the tween years.
Visit the restricted areas of the Colosseum (low budget, high effort) – The Colosseum is divided into several parts: the so called general areas, the arena, the underground and the attic.
All areas are worth seeing but the underground, arena and attic are especially cool for kids. The arena is the stage where the gladiators fought, so it is cool to step on it, the underground is where the animals and gladiators waited to get onto the stage, and the attic is the very top tier of the Colosseum, very high up.
These areas are open to the public BUT the competition for tickets is massive so they are not easy to get. If you can however, they are one of the most enjoyable parts for tweens. Tickets are available on the official website https://ticketing.colosseo.it
Visit the Colosseum with a tween friendly tour – The other great way to visit the Colosseum with tweens is by booking a tween friendly tour by a specialised provider.
These tours are ideal for tweens who still enjoy games and highly interactive tours: the guide has activities, games, scavenger hunts and quizzes for them that make the place come to life and make the visit for informative and fun.
The best Colosseum tours for tweens I recommend is the LivTours Colosseum tour for kids, which also includes the Roman Forum. This tours includes entry tickets, they source them for you, so you don’t have to worry about navigating the website or anything of the sort, all is done for you!
Other tours for tweens I like are:
Visit Castel Sant’Angelo
One of the most exciting attractions in Rome for tweens is Castel Sant’Angelo, the only castle in Rome.
Castel Sant’Angelo is a very special building.
This peculiar history means that today the castle is a weird, wonderful and fascinating place with plenty of stories to tell.
In it, you can still see the original burial chambers of the Emperors; you can walk the bastions of the medieval fortress, and see the cannonballs still piling up beside the sentinels’ posts.
You can peek into the treasure room and you can even see the start ion the secret passage that connected the castle to the Vatican and that the Pope used to escape quickly!
The castle is perched on the side of the river Tiber and is unique, exciting and scenic: one of the best things to see n Rome with tweens!
You can read here >> our guide to Castel SAnt’Angelo, Rome including best tickets and tours.
Visit the fun Museum of Illusions
The Museum of Illusions is a newly opened Rome attraction that is perfect for tweens who need a break from sightseeing.
The museum is in Via Merulana, in the city center, and has a collection of fun images, installations and interactive rooms that bend seem to bend the rules of physics playing with your perception of color and space.
The museum operates on a timed slot system and take a little over 1h to visit.
It is a fantastic place for tweens and teens and it is very easy to visit on the same day as Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica or the Monti area.
Booking is mandatory on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
You can find our full review and tips for visiting the Museum of Illusions here
Climb to the top of St Peter’s Dome
If you have tweens who are not afraid of heights, you may love climbing to the top of St Peter’s dome!
The dome is the best viewpoint over the city of Rome and a fascinating place to see for its incredible architecture and details.
Access is by lift and by stairs, for a total of over 500 steps!
The stairs start broad, but they get narrower as you get close to the top, the last part being a narrow spiral staircase with a rope as bannister.
While not dangerous, the narrow spaces and the incredible views you have once you are at the top make the whole experience feel like a real adventure: make sure you give your tweens a camera for photos because what you see from the top terrace is breathtaking.
They are sure to want to capture it!
Tickets for the dome climb are available from the official site
Take a pasta making class
A wonderful thing to do in Rome with tweens is a pasta making class in a local home.
Making pasta is a fun and hands on activity for kids and since some of Rome’s most famous staple dishes are pasta based, this is also a culturally significant thing to do!
There are a few lovely classes I recommend:
Pasta making with DevourTours / Walks of Italy: excellent, super hands on, in Trastevere. Available to book direct or on GetYourGuide Aff Link (I often prefer GYG as once you book, you get discounts on additional activities)
This is a super fun group class in Trastevere, perfect also as an opportunity to then have a wander in this pretty area. The class also includes a gelato making demo.
Another really cool class we took is with Lucilla Cooking Class, which is wonderful as it happens into a local home!
You can read our full review here or you can join my free Facebook Group Travel Italy with kids (a fab group with a lot of really nice parents talking all things Italy and kids) and I will put you in touch!
Go to gladiator school
One of the funniest and best family activities we have ever taken in Rome is a gladiator class.
The class is an active, slightly silly yet incredibly fun experience that is perfect for kids age 6 and up but that truly come into its own when done with tweens.
Offered by Gruppo Storico Romano, a local organization devoted to the historic re-enactment, the class teaches you how the Roman army used to operate, gets you the change to see and try on ancient Roman armours, teaches you fighting techniques and even has you fighting in the arena!
The class is a lough out loud, family bonding experience and a great way to have fun with your tweens in Rome if you are looking for something to do that is engaging and very different from any other tour you may have in your plans!
You can read here >>> our experience taking a Gladiator’s Class with tweens.
Visit the Domus Aurea
The Domus Aurea is the residence of Emperor Nero, once the most lavish and extravagant palace ever built in Rome and now fully underground!
The Domus is incredible to see and my Horrible History loving Tween absolutely adored it, as he was able to make plenty of connections between the place and what he had learned about Emperor Nero from the show.
The house is only accessible by tour and the experience is perfect for tweens: you are underground, which is pretty exciting and new in itself, and at the end of the tour you get a virtual reality headset that makes you ‘be’ in the house as is used to be. Incredible!
The Domus Aurea is not spooky but it does feel little adventurous and it is full of incredible stories tweets can appreciate. For us, it is a favorite!
You can book tickets directly form the official concession here or from the much easier interface of GetYourGuide
Go on a treasure hunt
One of my tweens favourite ways to experience Rome is via treasure hunt.
Over the course of the years, we have tried several and now we have some favourites!
Guided scavenger hunt for kids – if you like a guided experience, this one is perfect. The ‘hunt’ is on foot but done at a kid friendly pace, the guide is engaging, and you see a lot, learn a lot and have a lot of fun, honestly also as an adult!
Treasure Hunt by Mostra di Leonardo – if you prefer to do things in your own time, this is a super enjoyable, self guided treasure hunt organised by the Leonardo Museum in Piazza della Cancelleria.
The hunt takes place in Rome city center (Piazza Navona area) and it leaves you maximum flexibility in terms of what you want to explore: at the start, the museum equips you with an iPad with an interactive map that showcases clues as you walk.
As you make your way around Rome city center, the map picks up on your location and shows you things to see and challenged you to riddles.
Once you are tired of exploring, you can go back to the museum and finish the hunt inside. This is a fantastic activity for tweens and a great bonding experience too, we had lots of fun doing it and we highly recommend it!
Find tickets and info here >>> Museo Leonardo Treasure Hunt in Rome*
If you want a simpler and cheaper way, they I’ve got you covered as I made Rome scavenger hunts myself, in the form of printables!
My self guided scavenger cover several areas, which means you can explore Rome City Center in your own time and without a fixed itinerary, while the kids have fun. You can find them here.
Go shopping
If you have tweens who love shopping, you’ll be happy to hear that Rome has wonderful shopping streets!
Among the best, in the city center there are Via del Corso and Via Cola di Rienzo, offering a mix of high street brands, independent shops and top brands that will suit most pockets and styles
Visit Rome Catacombs
The tween years are among the best ones to experience Rome’s catacombs.
Rome’s catacombs are a network of underground tunnels excavated in the first centuries AD as Christian cemeteries.
They are a wonderful, powerful attraction to visit and they mix an element of adventure and education that that most tweens will enjoy.
Open to visits by guided your only, the catacombs can be visited also by younger children; however, I believe that tweens are most likely to make the most out of the experience while younger kids may find the whole setup a little upsetting.
You can read here >>> our tips for visiting Rome’s catacombs with kids
Visit the Capitoline Museum with a Perch Jackson Tour
Rome is full of wonderful museums but one of the most suitable for tweens is the Capitoline Museums.
The Capitoline Museum are a large museum in Rome city centre with invaluable sculpture and paintings from ancient and modern times.
They are suitable for a visit at any age; however, I find that it is especially suited to tweens who may recognize here the representation of many Gods and heroes form Roman and Greek Mythology (you can even take a Percy Jackson your here!)
Find here >>> all the info about visiting the Capitoline Museums with kids
Go to the Borghese Gardens
while my tweens have partially outgrown playgrounds, there is no doubt that they still love parks and their favorite in Rome is the Borghese gardens.
A large park in Rome city center, the Borghese Gardens have plenty of space for them to just chill out but also something special: the option to rent family bikes or even pedal go-karts, perfect for tweens.
You can find here >>> all you need to know about the Borghese Gardens.
Experience ‘Welcome to Rome’ Multimedia Show
Welcome to Rome is a permanent exhibition in Rome City Center with a cinema hall showing a short movie about the history of Rome from its foundation to now.
It is a reasonably short activity to do, something that will keep you busy but will not eat up the whole day, and a great way to give the children an overview of the history of Rome in a fashion that is easy to grasp yet historically correct. You can find info and book here.
Consider an early morning or evening tour of the Vatican Museums
The Vatican Museums are among the most significant and beautiful museums in the world and tweens start being of the right age to appreciated their wonders.
Very much a traditional museum, the Vatican Museums can be boring for kids used to more interactive experiences but contains masterpieces such as the Sistine Chapel, the Laocoon, the Egyptian Museums and Raphael’s Rooms that are so impressive, they are worth seeing.
My favorite ways to visiting the Vatican with tweens is with a tour. My favorite ones are:
Vatican Museum Turning on the Lights tour (high budget, best of the best). For me, the absolute best way to see the Vatican Museum is with the so called ‘Turning on the Lights/ Keymaster Tour’ a super exclusive tour that makes you get into the Vatican Museum before opening hours and join the Vatican Museum Keymaster as he opens the museum doors and turns on the lights, gallery after gallery – yes, you literally walk in the empty museums before anyone else and even get to open the Sistine Chapel yourself! It is hard to get an expensive but if you can, there is nothing like it!
Early morning express tour of the Sistine Chapel – this is a short tour, perfect for tweens, showing you the Sistine Chapel and Rahpael’s Rooms. While not a tour for kids as such, the short timeframe and the stories surrounding the Sistine Chapel and its creations make it a good option also for children.
Vatican Museums tour for families by LivTours – a great tour specifically for kids, suitable especially for younger tweens who may enjoy a scavenger hunt approach to the visit, this tour includes the Sistine Chapel but also many other museum highlights including the wonderful Egyptian wing.
Vatican Museums Tour with Mariaclaudia – another great tour for kids with a scavenger hunt approach, this tour is run by Mariaclaudia of Mariaclaudia Tours, a wonderful independent guide specialising in tours for kids. She is best contacted by Facebook, tell her Marta from Mama Loves Rome sent you!
Take a Golf cart tour to see Rome’s highlights
If your tweens are anything like mine, they will have those days when they do not feel like standard sightseeing. So for those days, a golf cart tour is a great thing to plan in Rome with tweens!
A golf cart is a silly yet very clever to get around Rome: thanks to its small size, golf carts can get to piazzas that are not reachable by vehicles such as hop on off bus tours and are, therefore, a great way to see Rome’s highlight in comfort and without having to walk.
There are many golf cart tours in Rome. The two I feel like recommending the most are:
>>> Golf Cart Tour by LivTours – my personal favorite for quality of the guides and outstanding customer support.
>>> Got cart tour by Rolling Rome, a more budget option
Where to stay in Rome with tweens: resources
Depending on budget and style of travel, the following resources will help you pick your tween-friendly accommodation in Rome:
>>> Best Family friendly hotels in Rome city center
>>> Recommended family friendly rentals
>>> Rome hotels with interconnecting rooms
Things to do in Rome with tweens: pin this!
