The weather is the easy part of bringing children to Rome in April: warm enough for gelato at eleven and a picnic at one, and weeks short of the heat that has small legs giving up on the Forum by mid-morning. Easter is harder. It lands in April in most years, and Holy Week brings pilgrims to St Peter's just as schools across Europe break up. If your dates can move, aim for the fortnight after, when the queues shrink to a length a six-year-old can stand in.
Book timed tickets for the Colosseum and the Vatican Museums before you fly. Spring slots go quickly, and half an hour in a ticket queue uses up more of a child's patience than the Sistine Chapel will ever give back. Under-fives can skip the Vatican Museums, where almost nothing on the long, crowded route to the chapel is at toddler height. Avoid the first Sunday of the month, when state sites including the Colosseum are normally free and the crowds come accordingly.
If your children like swords, be in Rome for 21 April, the city's birthday. The Gruppo Storico Romano sets up camp at the Circus Maximus and usually runs a gladiator school where children can try the moves, and on the weekend nearest the date a procession of legionaries and senators marches from there to the Colosseum. The programme shifts each year.
When nobody can face another ruin, go to Villa Borghese for a rowing boat on the little lake and bikes on the avenues, with the Bioparco zoo inside the park. Bring a light buggy rather than a big pram for the cobbles and a layer for the evenings. Bottled water you can do without. The nasoni, Rome's cast-iron street fountains, run with fresh drinking water all over the city, and a finger over the spout sends the water arcing up from a little hole on top, into a mouth if you are lucky and down a sleeve if not.
For a wet day, Explora, the children's museum near Piazza del Popolo, is built for under-12s who need to touch everything, a relief after days of being told to keep their hands to themselves in churches.