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Scipione Borghese’s private Renaissance park and the adjacent 19th-century Pincio gardens, with statues and fountains, are a joy to explore, especially on two wheels. There are bike rental stands scattered throughout the park. You can also rent paddle boats for the little lake or take the kids to the park’s small funfair.

Villa Borghese funfair

This museum near the city centre is specifically designed with children in mind. It allows youngsters to understand how things work through fascinating hands-on displays

Fantastically creepy chapels festively decorated with mosaics made from the bones of dead monks, a few of whose skeletons remain propped up in bone-built niches. It rarely fails to impress, and for adolescents and above can be a highlight of the trip, although it may be a bit too much for the very young or overly squeamish.

Rome’s zoo, once a depressing conglomeration of badly kept cement cubicles, has been overhauled to become a pretty (if relatively minor) “biological garden” set into a corner of Villa Borghese park.

This modest collection of rollercoasters, carnival rides and funhouses in the Fascist-built suburb of EUR is a far cry from Euro Disney, but will fit the bill when only an amusement park will do.

You don’t need to understand Italian to appreciate a Punch and Judy show (the pugilistic characters are native to Italy). This is the last of the old puppet kiosks that once peppered Rome’s public parks, offering a dying art form for free.

This park, tucked into a bend in the Aurelian Wall where Trastevere fades into Monteverde Vecchio, features a playground and a small funfair with a tiny rollercoaster.

There is nothing more thrillingly spooky in Rome than wandering these mazes of tight, dimly lit corridors, roughly carved in the tufa and lined with thousands of tomb niches. At the San Domitilla complex, some guides even let you touch a few of the bones – at most others, all human remains have been removed to ossuaries on lower levels (see Catacombs of Domitilla).

When traipsing around ruins has sapped your energy, spend some time cooling down with the locals. This open-air swimming pool in EUR is Rome’s largest and most pleasant, with a special area for kids.

A welcome break from all the art of the Vatican complex. You get great views not only from the lantern atop the dome, across Piazza San Pietro towards the River Tiber, but also from the drum halfway up, which offers a bird’s-eye perspective down into the transept of St Peter’s Basilica itself (see Features of St Peter’s Basilica).