Trovatrails – Rome with Kids

I am not exaggerating when I say that downloading this app and doing these scavenger hunts as a family turned our family trip around in the most positive ways. Our sons, 9 and 5, had the best time searching for clues throughout the city. They loved the work of paying attention to detail and solving the mystery. We loved that they cheerfully marched along without complaining about how tired they were, allowing us to really take in the city and the history as a family. I cannot recommend this enough to families. We particularly loved the Heart of Rome Neptune’s Trident Trail. Thank you to from the bottom of my heart to the developer of these scavenger hunts.

Unfortunately, we only learned about this app a few days before our trip to Rome ended. We did three of these, and wish we would’ve done all of them. In particular, we paid like $400 for a kids tour of the Colosseum and I think they would’ve had more fun doing this for free (the Colosseum one is free). My girls are aged 6 and 10, and absolutely loved it. Bring a charger for your phone though because it will be used the whole time.

As a parent who has visited Rome with young kids as a tourist and lived as a resident in Rome with young kids as well, I can say that Trova is a great way to engage them with Rome’s often overwhelming cultural and historical treasures. By breaking down experiences into a fun and well written, well structured game with lots of easily digestible and very interesting and accurate facts, it makes an easy go of what might otherwise be chaotic visits during which a parent who hasn’t studied Roman history in depth might struggle to explain to kids what they are seeing. The pacing and time needed to finish each experience are just right.