Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo wedding

The Timeo opened in 1873 on the slope directly below Taormina’s Greek theatre, the first hotel in a town that was then a stop on the Grand Tour rather than a resort. Painters came for the light, the German landscape painter Otto Geleng among the first of them, and stayed.

The guests who followed made the terrace famous: Audrey Hepburn, Marcello Mastroianni, Elizabeth Taylor.

Below the hotel lies a six-acre park, first planted by Lady Trevelyan, the Englishwoman who settled in Taormina at the end of the nineteenth century. It is a garden of terraces and stone paths, fragrant with Mediterranean planting, wrapped around a heated pool that looks straight down the coast to the Bay of Naxos.

Belmond runs the hotel today. Its restaurant Otto Geleng, sixteen seats under chef Roberto Toro, holds one Michelin star in the 2026 guide, and the Michelin Guide gives the Grand Hotel Timeo two Keys.

A wedding at the Timeo takes the whole hotel, and it is held in the two places the hotel is known for: a garden for the cocktail and a terrace for the dinner, both facing Etna.

The cocktail happens here, among palms and Mediterranean planting on the terraces below the hotel. Up to 230 guests move through the gardens with the sea on one side and the theatre above them, and the volcano fills the view to the south-west.

We recommend holding the cocktail until the last hour of sun, when Etna turns pink and the coast below goes blue.

The wedding dinner belongs on the Literary Terrace, beside the Ristorante Timeo, under a marquee the hotel requires for every wedding. The marquee is the wet-weather guarantee, it seats up to 230, and it starts at €40,000 with VAT included.

It is also a blank structure, which is the point. We design it open-sided toward Etna whenever the forecast allows, so the dinner keeps the view the terrace is known for and the guests forget they are under cover.

The hotel’s main restaurant, opening onto the terrace, with Sicilian and Mediterranean cooking and local wines. On a buyout it becomes part of the wedding rather than a room the public shares, and the kitchen behind it cooks every meal of the three days.

Sixteen seats, one Michelin star, open from May, Wednesday to Sunday. Too small for a wedding dinner and exactly the right size for the night before it, for the couple and their parents.

A separate villa a few steps from the hotel, reopened after its renovation in 2026, with 21 rooms and suites, its own heated infinity pool and Bar Clementina on the ground floor. On a buyout it is part of the hotel, and it is where we put the wedding party.

The hotel’s spa, in partnership with Dior, open daily. The buyout carries a spa minimum of just over €6,000 a day, which we spend on the wedding party’s morning rather than leaving it unused.

The Timeo hosts the cocktail and the dinner, and the ceremony takes place in the town. That suits Taormina, where the ceremony venues are a short walk from the hotel’s gate.

The civil ceremony takes place at Palazzo dei Duchi di Santo Stefano, a fifteenth-century palace of black lava and white limestone at the southern end of the old town, which the comune uses for civil marriages in its first-floor hall and its garden. Foreign couples bring a nulla osta from their own country, an interpreter is required when the couple does not speak Italian, and we handle the file with the Ufficio di Stato Civile from the start.

For a church wedding, the Duomo on Piazza Duomo, dedicated to Saint Nicholas, and San Giuseppe on Piazza IX Aprile both host weddings in the old town.

From either, the walk back to the Timeo runs along the Corso Umberto, and we time it so the guests arrive in the gardens as the light softens.

Sixty-seven rooms and suites, 46 in the main building and 21 at Villa Timeo, sleeping 165 when the junior suites and suites take their extra beds.

Most rooms in the main building have a balcony or terrace over the coast. The La Floresta Suite has two bedrooms and a terrace of 300 square metres with a private Jacuzzi, looking from Castelmola to Etna, and the Trevelyan Suite opens onto the gardens. Villa Timeo’s junior suites are mostly on two levels.

The buyout is one rate for the whole hotel, paid in full by one party, so the rooms are the couple’s to give rather than the guests’ to book.

At Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo that means a rooming list rather than a booking link, and we build it around who travels together and who needs the lift rather than the stairs.

The hotel stands on Via Teatro Greco in the centre of Taormina, at the foot of the Greek theatre, on the hill above Mazzarò Bay.

Catania Fontanarossa is 57 minutes and 63 kilometres away by road, and it is the airport for every guest. It carries direct flights from London and across Europe, and Delta flies non-stop from New York.

Palermo is three hours and 50 minutes by road.

Taormina-Giardini station is eight minutes below the hotel, on the line along the coast from Messina and Catania. Belmond’s sister hotel Villa Sant’Andrea sits on Mazzarò Bay ten minutes away, with its beach club and boats, and a courtesy shuttle runs between the two.

The town itself is a pedestrian one. Coaches stop at its edge and guests walk the last stretch.

A Grand Hotel Timeo wedding starts from €1,400,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €1,800,000 all-in, for 130 to 230 guests over three nights.

The whole hotel, all 67 rooms and suites, from €308,000 a night in June with VAT included, for a minimum of three consecutive nights. That comes to just over €900,000 for the stay before anyone has eaten.

It is one rate and one payment, made in full by one party, and arrivals and departures on a Saturday are not possible.

• Food and drink: €55,000 a day, consumed on the property by the whole group
• The DIOR Spa: just over €6,000 a day, in treatments during the stay

Across three days those come to just over €180,000. They are minimums rather than estimates, so a lighter appetite does not reduce them.

Required on the Literary Terrace for every wedding, from €40,000 with VAT included. It takes a day and a half to build and a day to take down, which is why the stay is three nights.

The design of the marquee, the flowers, the lighting, the music, the photography, the ceremony in town, the second venue for the dancing, and the transfers. A relocation fee applies where individual guests have already booked rooms for the dates, and it depends on how many have.

Music at the Timeo is acoustic, indoors and out, until midnight: no amplification, no electrical equipment and no drums.

It is a rule that shapes the evening rather than ends it. Under the marquee it suits a string quartet through dinner, a guitar trio for the speeches, or Sicilian folk musicians with the cake, and acoustic music sounds better on a terrace over the sea than anything through a speaker.

For a band and a dance floor, we take a second venue for the rest of the night, down on the coast or in the hills behind Taormina, and run the transfers there and back. Guests walk out of the gardens at midnight into cars, and the hotel is quiet when they come home.

The marquee, the three nights and the midnight finish shape the whole weekend.

The marquee decides the calendar.

A day and a half to build and a day to take down means the three nights are not a formality, and with no Saturday arrival or departure the weekend runs Thursday to Sunday or Friday to Monday. We place the welcome evening while the marquee is going up and the farewell lunch while it comes down.

Three days of minimums are three events.

Food and drink run at €55,000 a day whatever is eaten. We design a welcome dinner and a farewell lunch worth having rather than leaving two days of a committed budget unspent.

The earlier the date, the smaller the relocation fee.

The hotel sells rooms to individual guests until the buyout is confirmed, and the relocation fee is set by how many have booked by then. We hold a date as early as the couple is ready, because the fee only grows.

The ceremony is the walk.

A civil ceremony at Palazzo dei Duchi di Santo Stefano or a church wedding at the Duomo puts the whole guest list on the Corso Umberto in their wedding clothes, with the town watching. We schedule it for the hour when the day-trippers have gone.

Magic Day plans weddings at Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo from the first conversation to the final farewell. The hotel gives a wedding the gardens for the cocktail, the Literary Terrace for the dinner, a kitchen with a Michelin star in the building and 67 rooms under one roof. Everything else is ours.

That means the ceremony in town, at the palazzo or the Duomo, with the comune’s file done months ahead. It means the marquee designed so Etna stays in the view, the acoustic musicians chosen for a terrace rather than a ballroom, and the second venue for the dancing with the transfers timed to midnight. It means the buyout held early enough to keep the relocation fee down, the three days of minimums spent on events worth attending, and a rooming list for 165 built around families.

We have planned weddings across Sicily for years, and we know which of the hotel’s rules shape the day and which shape the budget.