Rome for kids with golf cart

A private golf cart tour of Rome with a driver and a child-friendly guide — the answer to the single biggest problem of visiting this city with children, which is the distance between the things they want to see.

Rome looks compact on a map and is not. Between the Colosseum and the Vatican there is an hour of walking on cobblestones, and by the third one nobody under ten is enjoying themselves.

Why a golf cart works

The carts are street-legal, covered and fully open at the sides. They get into the narrow streets and pedestrian zones that coaches and taxis cannot enter, so you are dropped at the monument rather than four streets away from it.

They are easy to climb in and out of, which matters for small children and for grandparents. You can photograph from your seat without getting out. And the guide sits with you and talks the whole way, so the transfers between sites stop being dead time.

Two itineraries

1. The classic circuit — Piazza del Popolo, Via del Corso, the Pantheon, Largo Argentina, the Theatre of Marcellus, the Bocca della Verità, Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, Piazza Venezia, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and Via Margutta, returning to Piazza del Popolo.

2. The wider loop — Piazza del Popolo, Via Veneto, Monti, Trastevere, the Gianicolo terrace, the Vatican, Piazza Navona, Campo de’ Fiori, Castel Sant’Angelo and the Ara Pacis, returning to Piazza del Popolo.

The route is yours to change. The Jewish quarter and the Great Synagogue can be added to either.

Practical information

• Pick-up and drop-off at your hotel, if it is centrally located
• Private, with both a driver and a separate guide — the guide is free to talk to the children rather than watch the traffic
• The carts are open-sided: excellent in spring and autumn, and the reason to take a morning slot in high summer
• Give the number of passengers when booking; cart capacity is limited and larger families need two

For a slower, closer look at one neighbourhood on foot, the animals and symbols hunt is the better children’s tour. If you need the evening to yourselves afterwards, there is a babysitting service.