Rome

Rome asks a lot of small legs and gives a lot back. Ancient ruins sit in the middle of ordinary streets, so children stumble across two-thousand-year-old columns on the way to get gelato. The historic centre is compact enough to walk end to end, though the cobbles are unforgiving and the summer heat is real.

Nowhere makes history feel this physical. Children can stand inside an amphitheatre where fifty thousand people once roared, throw a coin into a fountain, and watch rain fall through the open roof of a building finished eighteen centuries ago. Between the big sights there are gardens with rowing boats, and gelato is never more than a street away.