Elba Family Holidays & Breaks

Take the Family is a travel agency specialising in active, adventure and luxury holidays. Your personal travel advisor will create the perfect Elba holiday for your family, with expert advice and dedicated support throughout.

Elba for family holidays

The third-largest Italian island, located just 10km off the coast of Tuscany, Elba hasn’t tended to be on British holidaymakers' radars. Yet as in the rest of Italy, it combines a genuine welcome to children with fabulous, child-friendly food, along with fine white-sand beaches, gorgeously clear water, plenty of watersports and a lush wooded interior perfect for walking and cycling.

Napoléon dominates Elba's history, but the island has come under the rule of the French, Turks, Spanish and a myriad of Italian peoples (Romans, Etruscans, Medicis) – a cosmopolitan mix that has left its legacy on the architecture and the culture.

Book an Elba holiday with Take the Family and we’ll book you something from our handpicked array of family-friendly hotels and other accommodation. As a specialist family travel agency, we can tailor-make the perfect holiday in Elba for your family – perhaps as part of a wider family holiday in other parts of Italy (maybe a city break in Florence, Rome or Naples). Contact one of our travel advisors now and let's discuss your dream trip.

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Things to do with kids in Elba

Elba Best Beaches and Watersports

• Head for the largest and best beach in Elba for kids, Marino di Campo, almost 2km long, with safe, shallow waters. Some areas are private, with paid access; their facilities can include small playgrounds and watersports such as windsurfing, boating, pedaloing and kayaking. Elba is also a great place for snorkelling and scuba-diving.

• With teens, head for gorgeous Cavoli Beach, where diving from the cliffs is popular and where high summer sees plenty of beach parties and DJ sets.

• From Cavoli take a boat or pedalo for a gander at the Grotta Azzurra (Grotta di Mare) sea grotto. The island you can see so well from here is Montecristo, famous from the Dumas novel but accessible only to a few people a year (with a long waiting list).

Other Outdoor Activities on Elba

• Go road-biking, mountain-biking or hiking. You might cycle or walk through the forest and ascend Monte Capanne (1,019m) to get a glimpse of the island's geographic diversity: craggy mountains, gentle slopes with olive groves and vineyards, dense pine forests, and the sparkling blue sea around. Don't miss the caprili – old stone shepherds' shelters.

• Follow the La Via dell' Essenza or Trail of Essences: 130km of coastal paths in 12 sections, each named for a local plant or herb, such as rosemary.

Kayaking in Elba

Eating in Elba

Food on Elba is simple and authentic, featuring lots of fresh local seafood. The best fish restaurants are in Marciana Marina and Marina di Campo, while Portoferraio has lots of cosy inns in the same family for generations. This being Italy, there are also plenty of pizzerias for kids hankering for the familiar.

If you come to Elba in early October, don’t miss the Chestnut Festival in the small medieval town of Poggio, with food stalls selling bread made from chestnut flour, castagnaccio cake, cheeses, chestnut tagliatelle and polenta, and roast chestnuts, all accompanied by lots of red wine for the grown-ups.

Scuba-diving in Elba

When to go to Elba

The best time to come to Elba is May, June, September or October – the milder weather in these months will particularly suit younger kids. Elba is a great option for the May or October half terms. July and August get extremely busy with mainly Italian and German holidaymakers.

A break from mountain-biking in Elba

How to get to Elba

There are no flights from the UK to Elba but the island has a small airport served by flights from a handful of Italian, Swiss and German locations.

We’ll include the most convenient travel options for your family in the bespoke package we create for you. This might be a flight from the UK to Pisa and from there a 75-minute transfer to Piombino for the 40- to 60-minute ferry to Elba, or a flight from the UK to Florence and a two-hour transfer to the ferry port.

We can also include car hire in your tailor-made Elba holiday and ensure that you are booked to take it on the ferry over to the island.

Elba

Hotel Hermitage

Hotel del Golfo