Florence with Kids: A Road Trip in Tuscany

By Eleni Fotiou, co-founder of MAMAKITA and Senior Family Travel Specialist for Greece & Italy

I must have been about five or six the first time I landed in Italy. My mother’s best friend had married an Italian — a warm, loud, wonderfully chaotic man — and our two families had made a tradition of spending the winter holidays together. They came to Greece every summer. We went to Italy every Christmas and New Year. I grew up learning my first Italian words not from a textbook but from their children, running through cold Florentine streets while our parents clinked glasses somewhere warm behind us.

Italy never quite felt foreign to me. It felt like a second family home.

I went back as a teenager, then again and again during my university years, eventually living in Rome for a stretch as part of an exchange programme. By the time I graduated, I spoke Italian fluently, had a circle of Italian friends I still cherish, and had fallen irreversibly in love with a country that somehow combines extraordinary beauty with a complete refusal to take itself too seriously. When my best friend later married an Italian too — of course she did — the family trips to Italy simply continued into the next chapter of my life.

This is how I ended up designing journeys to Italy alongside Greece. Not because it was a logical business extension, but because Italy is genuinely part of my story. And Tuscany — Florence above all — holds a particular place in my heart that I find myself wanting, urgently, to share with every family that asks me where to go.

So. Let me tell you about Florence and Tuscany with children. Really tell you.

Florence: The City That Turns Children Into Historians (Whether They Know It Or Not)

A Palazzo Full of Secrets

There’s a moment on every family visit to Palazzo Vecchio when a child — yours, mine, someone else’s nearby — goes very still and stops performing boredom. It happens somewhere around the secret passage.

This is the museum we recommend above all others in Florence for families, and not for the reasons you might expect. Yes, it’s magnificent. Yes, the frescoes are extraordinary. But what makes it perfect for children is that it’s built around a story — the story of the Medici family, told through costumed guides who know exactly how to hold a seven-year-old and a fourteen-year-old in the same breath. The “Life at Court” family tour winds through the palazzo’s rooms and eventually leads to a hidden passage and a costume room, where children can dress in clothes that Medici children might actually have worn. There are fresco painting workshops, egg tempera painting on wood, and activities that run between one and two hours. Reservations are mandatory and fill up fast — book before you travel.

Galileo, Jupiter’s Moons & the Question That Changed Everything

Some children are painters and dreamers. Others are the ones who ask why until you run out of answers. For the latter — and honestly, for all curious families — Museo Galileo is one of Florence’s most quietly extraordinary places.

Just around the corner from the Uffizi, this small museum holds the original telescopes through which Galileo observed Jupiter’s moons. His telescopes. The actual instruments. I remember standing in front of them the first time and feeling something shift — the understanding that history isn’t made of paintings and dates, but of human beings who simply refused to accept what they’d been told.

We’ve designed a private Galileo Family Discovery Tour around this museum, with skip-the-line access and a guide who knows how to make complex ideas land for children and adults alike. The tour reaches beyond the museum into the wider story of how Renaissance Florence became a place where artists and scientists worked side by side, each pushing the boundaries of what was considered possible. It’s the kind of experience that follows children home and resurfaces in school projects months later.

The “Stinky Bridge” & the Art of Making Gelato

Every family that crosses Ponte Vecchio with us gets the story. King Ferdinand I, deeply offended by the smell drifting from the butchers’ shops lining the bridge, issued a royal decree in 1593 banning them entirely — declaring that jewelers would take their place instead. Children find this delightful. The combination of royal authority and the word “stinky” never fails.

Our private Florence Family Walking Tour weaves through the city’s squares and hidden corners, with games and treasure hunts built into the route, before ending at an authentic family-run gelateria for a hands-on gelato-making workshop. I’ve done this with my own children and watched them move from restless to completely absorbed the moment they put their hands into the process. They learn the real differences between gelato and ice cream, choose their own flavors and ingredients, and leave with a skill they’ll show off for the rest of the trip. Gluten-free and dairy-free options are available — just let us know when booking.

Making a Pinocchio with Your Own Hands

Of all the experiences we offer in Florence, this is the one parents message me about afterwards. In a historic Palazzo near the Cathedral — a real artisan’s atelier with skylights and an original masonry kitchen — families join a private traditional Florentine wood decoration workshop to create their own wooden Pinocchio from scratch.

This is centuries-old craftsmanship, not a tourist activity. Children learn pouncing (a traditional pattern transfer technique), painting with natural pigments, sponging for texture, pickling for an aged effect, and a final protective beeswax patina that gives the finished piece warmth and character. The instructor explains the history behind every technique — why these methods have survived generations of Florentine artisans — and at the end, each child takes home a Pinocchio that is entirely, unmistakably theirs.

My Italian friends in Florence used to walk me past workshops like this when I was a student, peering in through windows at artisans bent over their benches. The fact that we can now bring families inside, into the middle of it, still gives me quiet satisfaction every time.

When the Kids Simply Need to Run

After all of this richness, Florence also knows how to let families breathe. Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti are vast and beautiful, perfect for reclaiming energy after intense museum visits. At Piazza della Repubblica, an antique carousel spins as it has for generations — and nearby, the Bartolucci toy workshop sells handcrafted wooden toys and Pinocchio souvenirs made by the family themselves, which pairs wonderfully if you’ve done the workshop earlier in the trip.

For lunch, we send families to Mercato Centrale — a two-floor market where the top level is a spectacular food court of high-quality local specialties. Let everyone choose their own dish. The mild chaos of it is, I promise, entirely part of the Florentine experience.

Siena: Medieval Magic, Entirely at Your Own Pace

There are cities you visit and cities you feel. Siena is firmly the latter — and one of the things I love most about it is that it gives itself to you freely, without needing a guide to unlock it.

Start at Piazza del Campo, that extraordinary shell-shaped square, and simply wander. The city is small enough to feel manageable, layered enough to keep surprising you.

For the Scientifically Curious

The Museum of Natural History, housed in a former monastery, is one of Tuscany’s oldest scientific collections — and the skeleton of a 15-metre whale displayed in the courtyard stops children in their tracks every time. Entrance is free (ring the doorbell on arrival), but note that the museum closes on Thursday afternoons and on weekends. Plan for a weekday morning.

For younger children, the Children’s Art Museum within the magnificent Santa Maria della Scala complex — directly opposite the Duomo — is a small but beautifully conceived space that speaks genuinely to young visitors.

Green Spaces & Room to Breathe

Five minutes on foot from Piazza del Campo, Orti dei Tolomei offers olive trees, open grass, climbing frames, picnic benches, and sweeping views over the city. It’s the kind of place where grandparents sit back and sigh with contentment while children run themselves thoroughly out. Equally lovely is Orto de Pecci, reached through the narrow street just left of Torre Mangia. A medieval garden path winds through it, the little café under the vines serves pizza and pasta, and the whole place operates at a pace that has nothing to do with the 21st century. We consider this one of Siena’s quiet treasures.

On the Road: Tuscany by Rental Car

Here is a truth about Tuscany that I have been trying to articulate since I was a university student driving between friends’ houses on back roads that seemed designed specifically to break your heart with their beauty: the landscape between the destinations is the destination.

The rolling hills, the cypress-lined lanes, the silver-green shimmer of olive groves in afternoon light — this is what your family will carry home. And the only real way to experience it is by car, at your own pace, with nowhere you absolutely have to be.

The Val d’Elsa Route: Towers & Medieval Skylines

Our first recommended route takes you through the Elsa Valley to San Gimignano, the hilltop town whose medieval towers rise against the Tuscan sky like something your children will immediately want to draw. It holds UNESCO World Heritage status, and kids who’ve just heard about rival families in the Palazzo Vecchio will suddenly understand why a family might build a tower taller than their neighbors’. The road winds through vineyards and olive groves, with viewpoints that invite spontaneous stops and photographs nobody planned but everyone treasures.

The Val d’Orcia Route: The Tuscany of Pure Imagination

If the Val d’Elsa is a fairy tale, the Val d’Orcia is an epic. This is the Tuscany of cinematic imagination — the undulating hills, the isolated farmhouses, the quality of light in the late afternoon that makes everyone instinctively go quiet. Drive to Pienza, the perfectly preserved Renaissance town famous for its pecorino cheese (the cheese shops are genuinely entertaining for children, who are fascinated by the wheels and the smells), then continue to Montepulciano, perched high above the valley with medieval streets and panoramic views that reward every step of the climb.

Both routes are entirely flexible — a half day if the family needs a gentler pace, a full day if the road keeps drawing you forward. We arrange the rental car, plan the stops, and suggest the restaurants along the way.

Worth Every Kilometre: Day Trips That Stay with You

Orvieto: The City That Arrives All at Once

Nothing quite prepares you for Orvieto. Dramatically perched atop volcanic tufo rock, it announces itself from the road in a way that makes children press their faces to the car window. Begin with the funicular cable car — two minutes through a tunnel of trees for less than €2, which immediately tells children this place operates by different rules. The Duomo di Orvieto is among Italy’s most beautiful cathedrals; stand in the medieval square and give it a moment to simply land.

For the adventurous, Orvieto Underground offers guided tours through 440 Etruscan caves carved beneath the city — once water reservoirs, wine cellars, and wartime hiding spaces. Older children find this genuinely thrilling. I find it moving every time.

Pitigliano: The Discovery That Feels Like Your Own

On the route south, Pitigliano — carved directly into the tufo rock, once home to a significant Jewish community and still called “Little Jerusalem” — is one of those places that makes travelers feel they’ve found something most people don’t know about. It’s breathtaking in the literal sense: you round a bend, the town appears on the rock, and for a moment nobody speaks. Add it if your itinerary allows. You won’t regret it.

The Moments You’ll Carry Home

Italy taught me something as a child that I didn’t have words for until much later: that beauty, when it’s genuine, doesn’t need explaining. It just needs to be experienced, preferably with people you love and enough time to let it settle.

What we’ve learned designing these journeys — and what my Italian friends, my Italian-speaking childhood, and twenty years of returning to this country have taught me — is that children don’t remember the paintings as much as they remember the stories told in front of them. They remember the secret passage, the bridge with the butchers’ smell that offended a king, the Pinocchio they pulled off the workshop table with their own hands. The gelato flavor they invented. The road that wound through hills so beautiful they seemed impossible.

That is what we build for you at Mamakita.

Every detail — the skip-the-line tickets, the private guides who speak fluently to both your seven-year-old and your teenager, the rental car logistics, the restaurant that can handle a tired, hungry family at the end of a long and wonderful day — we handle all of it.

You focus on the moments. We’ll take care of everything else.

Ready to start planning your Tuscany family adventure? Reach out to our team at Mamakita here and let’s create something your family will be talking about for years to come.