Antica Fattoria di Paterno wedding

Paterno stands on a hill in the Florentine hills, with vineyards, olive groves and woods on the slopes below and a tower above it all.

The estate’s first traces go back to the twelfth century, when the land was a seat of noble Florentine families. The Pitti, the family of Palazzo Pitti, had a watchtower built here. The tower that stands today dates from the seventeenth century, and the villa beside it is a nineteenth-century house.

The estate is a casa comunale, which is the single most useful thing about it.

Today it also goes by Villa Paterno.

The hire takes every space for the day, and the day moves through them: the arrival in the barrel hall, the ceremony on the San Miniato terrace, dinner in the square under the tower, and the dancing in the panoramic hall.

The panoramic entrance can hold a first small reception. Beyond it the hall of the vats leads into the hall of oak barrels, where we set the Tuscan aperitivo among the wine.

The terrace where the ritual area is set under the estate’s casa comunale standing, for a civil or a symbolic ceremony. With its loggia it seats 120. This is where we put the ceremony, facing the valley.

The square at the foot of the lit tower, seating 180 for dinner. It carries a ceremony, the aperitivo or the party as well, and on a clear evening it is the dinner room of an Antica Fattoria di Paterno wedding.

The indoor hall facing the piazzetta, seating 180, with a starry-sky ceiling and windows that open onto each other. It is the main dinner room in winter and the wet-weather plan the rest of the year.

The panoramic hall for the welcome cocktail, the aperitivo and the after-dinner party, with a corner set aside for the children’s entertainers.

The Grande Gazebo in the garden seats 30, for a cake cutting or a first dance. L’Albero della Vita is the centuries-old oak in the private part of the villa, where a symbolic ceremony is held and the invitations are kept in an old casket. The Terrazza Teatro faces the Chianti hills at sunset.

An Antica Fattoria di Paterno wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 100 to 150 guests.

Sole use of the estate for one event in a day, lunch or dinner, starts at just under €7,000 with VAT included. It moves with the month and the day of the week.

It carries every space on the estate for the day and a night with breakfast in the tower’s bridal suite.

The other six rooms of the tower, for twelve guests on the night of the event, come to just under €2,000 together with breakfast.

Brought in. The hire does not include catering, and the caterer comes from the estate’s list.

The caterer, the furniture, the flowers, the music, the lighting and the photography, the hours of dancing after one, and the hotels for the guests the tower cannot sleep.

Antica Fattoria di Paterno can celebrate a legally binding civil ceremony on its own ground.

The estate is a casa comunale, and the ritual area is set on the Terrazza San Miniato. So there is no morning at a town hall, no drive there and back for the couple and the witnesses, and no second ceremony staged in the afternoon for the guests.

There is one ceremony, it is the legal one, and it happens on a terrace above the valley. We would weigh that heavily for a couple marrying abroad with a large guest list.

The Sala degli Specchi seats 180 indoors, and the estate’s comfortable figure with the wet-weather plan included is 150.

That is the shape we want. A wet evening at Paterno means the dinner moves across the piazzetta into a room larger than the guest list, with its windows open, rather than under a structure hired at the last minute.

So we design both rooms from the start, with the lighting and the floor plan drawn twice.

The hire buys sole use of the estate for one event, a lunch or a dinner.

It means nobody else’s wedding is in the next field. It also means a welcome dinner the night before is a second hire, so we price the second day alongside the first. Tenuta I Massini, the affiliated residence three minutes away, can carry the welcome party instead.

Antica Fattoria di Paterno sleeps 14, in seven rooms in the tower, on the night of the event.

The bridal suite looks down the valley and comes inside the hire with breakfast. The Executive Suite, the Royal Suite and four double suites make up the other six.

Tenuta I Massini, three minutes away, holds 30 more guests in apartments. The rest of the wedding stays in Florence, 50 minutes away, and we block the rooms and run the coaches at the end of the night.

The estate is on the Via Paterno at Montespertoli, in the province of Florence, in the hills between the Val di Pesa and the Elsa valley.

Florence city centre is 50 minutes and Siena an hour and 13.

Florence Peretola is 48 minutes by road and Pisa an hour and 11, so the estate is served by two airports. Bologna is an hour and 40 and carries more long-haul flights than either, and Rome Fiumicino is four hours and seven.

Fifty minutes from Florence is what makes a venue with 14 beds work: the guests stay in the city, see it on the Friday, and reach the terrace in under an hour.

A legal ceremony on site, a covered room larger than the wedding, and a night that ends at one unless the hours are bought.

One ceremony on the Terrazza San Miniato.

The casa comunale standing means the legal ceremony happens on the estate. We prepare the paperwork with the comune and skip the town-hall trip, which gives the afternoon back.

Buy the hours after one before the day.

Dancing runs to one in the morning, indoors or out, and further hours are added to it. We put them in the first budget, so the band’s last set is planned rather than bought on the night.

The caterers the estate already knows.

Antica Fattoria di Paterno keeps an approved list for catering, and we work with those vendors regularly. The caterer brings the kitchen, so the menu, the furniture and the service are briefed as one.

Fourteen beds in the tower, the rest in Florence.

The tower goes to the couple and the parents. One coach route back to the city at the end of the night is simpler than scattering 150 guests across the hills.

Magic Day plans weddings at Antica Fattoria di Paterno from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 60 guests or for 180. The estate lets every space for one event in a day, with a night in the tower’s bridal suite, and the catering is brought in.

That leaves the caterer, the furniture, the lighting, the flowers, the music, the civil ceremony’s paperwork, the hotels in Florence and the coaches with the planner. A welcome dinner is a second hire, and we price it alongside the first.

What we know from working the estate is the shape of its day: the aperitivo in the barrel hall, one legal ceremony on the San Miniato terrace, dinner in the piazzetta with the Sala degli Specchi dressed in case, and the hours after one bought before the evening.

Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the day comes to.