San Diego family guide

Things to Do in Little Italy with Kids

Little Italy is a walkable downtown San Diego neighborhood that grew from a historic Italian fishing community and now buzzes with restaurants, cafes, and gathering spaces along India Street. Its centerpiece, the Piazza della Famiglia, is a European-style public square with a central fountain that draws families and street performers. On Saturdays the Little Italy Mercato farmers market fills several blocks with food and produce.

Curated by Simir Shah

Reviewed & updated August 2026 · we check listings regularly, but hours and prices change — confirm before you go.

Little Italy on the map

📍 Where Little Italy is

Little Italy sits in San Diego, Southern California. Nearest major airport: San Diego Intl (~2 mi / 3 km). It's roughly 111 mi (178 km) from Downtown LA — SoCal traffic can make a drive take far longer than the distance suggests, so plan around it.

Visiting? See SoCal at a glance, getting around and which airport.

💡 Local tip: The Saturday Mercato is the liveliest time to visit; use a nearby parking structure since street spots around the piazza are scarce on market mornings.

Family attractions near Little Italy

The closest kid-friendly attractions in neighboring towns — with driving distance from Little Italy.

Parks & Hiking · San Diego · 0.2 mi

Waterfront Park

Downtown bayfront park with a huge interactive fountain kids splash in and big lawns for play. The 12-acre park opened in 2014 on what used to be surface parking lots around the County Administration Center, a 1938 landmark building constructed on infilled tidelands as part of a decades-old vision for a public downtown waterfront. The interactive fountain flows directly out from the historic building into the open lawn, tying the old architecture to the new public space.

Free

Museums & Learning · San Diego · 0.3 mi

Maritime Museum of San Diego

Historic ships on the Embarcadero including the Star of India, an 1863 iron-hulled tall ship that holds the Guinness World Record as the oldest active sailing ship on Earth, having circled the globe 21 times. Climb through the B-39, a real Cold War-era Soviet submarine that played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

~$24 adult / ~$14 child

Museums & Learning · San Diego · 0.8 mi

USS Midway Museum

Tour a real retired aircraft carrier on the Embarcadero — the USS Midway was the U.S. Navy's longest-serving carrier of the 20th century, commissioned in 1945 and active for nearly 47 years through Vietnam and the Gulf War. Since opening as a museum in 2004, it's become the most-visited ship museum in the world, with flight-deck jets and a flight simulator to explore.

~$34 adult / ~$24 child

Museums & Learning · San Diego · 1 mi

San Diego Air & Space Museum

Iconic round Balboa Park museum housed in the 1935 Art Deco Ford Building, with a rotunda shaped like a giant gear at its center. The collection has grown from 25 aircraft when it moved in here in 1980 to more than 80 today, spanning early flight to the space age, alongside a flight simulator.

~$24 adult / ~$15 child

Indoor Play · San Diego · 1 mi

The New Children's Museum

This downtown museum, opened in 2008 in a green building designed by architect Rob Wellington Quigley, commissions contemporary artists to build room-sized interactive art installations kids can climb through and explore. Its Artopia studios add hands-on workshops in painting, drawing, and pottery.

~$15 per person

Shopping & Treats · San Diego · 1 mi

Seaport Village

Waterfront shopping and dining village on the Embarcadero, home to a hand-carved 1895 carousel by noted carver Charles I.D. Looff, the same craftsman behind the Santa Monica Pier carousel, that traveled through five cities before landing here in 2004. Fifty-four carved animals and two chariots still turn today alongside the bayfront strolls.

Free to stroll