Belmond Villa San Michele wedding

The hotel is a fifteenth-century Franciscan monastery on the hillside at Fiesole, five hundred feet above Florence.

Its façade is attributed to Michelangelo, and the building keeps the shape a monastery gave it: a cloister, a loggia, a chapel room, and terraced gardens cut into the hill below. The woods behind are where Leonardo da Vinci is said to have trialled his flying machines.

The hotel holds one Michelin Key. It reopened in April 2026 after an eighteen-month restoration by Luigi Fragola Architects, with the terraced gardens restored alongside it. There are three restaurants, with Antesi the fine-dining room among them, the Bar Doccia, and the hotel’s first spa, by Guerlain, inside the old convent.

Four spaces can be reserved on their own, and a full buyout opens two more.

Two hundred and fifty square metres on the terrace, and the largest published capacity at the hotel: 40 for a ceremony, a cocktail or a banquet.

A hundred and twenty square metres for 40 standing, usually the aperitivo after a ceremony elsewhere on the terrace.

Three hundred square metres of formal garden and the monastery’s arcaded loggia, reserved together on a full buyout, when the hotel hosts up to 100 guests.

The fine-dining room seats 20 for lunch and the poolside grill 20 for dinner, for the smaller meals across a wedding weekend.

A Belmond Villa San Michele wedding starts from €800,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €1,000,000 all-in for 50 to 100 guests.

The gardens and the two private restaurant spaces can be reserved on their own, for the welcome evening, the lunch the day after and the smaller gatherings across a wedding weekend.

For a wedding of any real size the hotel is taken over in full, for up to 100 guests, with the Italian Gardens and the Loggia given over to the banquet. That figure is quoted against the dates by Belmond’s sales team, and it is the number the whole budget turns on.

It is the figure that places San Michele against another hotel’s rate card, so we obtain it against your dates first and do the comparison ourselves.

Banqueting prices carry the hotel’s linen, cutlery, crystal and dinnerware, printed personalised menus, the table plan and a menu for special diets.

A fee for the reserved area may apply on top, and any set-up beyond the hotel’s own is quoted separately. Flowers, lighting, furniture and music all sit outside the catering line.

The accommodation requirement here rises in steps, and the shape of it decides a guest list.

Up to 20 guests the hotel asks for five rooms. From 20 to 30 guests it asks for ten. From 30 to 40 it asks for twenty, which is more than half the hotel.

So a list of 29 books ten rooms and a list of 31 books twenty. The second wedding is not meaningfully larger than the first, and it carries double the accommodation. Above 40 the stepped table stops and the full buyout takes over, which at 39 rooms is a shorter distance than it sounds.

We draw the list against 20, 30 and 40 before any date is held, because those three numbers decide the accommodation line.

Thirty-nine rooms and suites, redesigned in the 2026 restoration, most of them opening onto a terrace, a garden or the view of the city.

Three signature suites lead the house. The Limonaia Suite, in the former lemon house, has its own terrace and a heated plunge pool. The Grand Tour Suite, in the main building, looks across Florence from rooms Belmond records as a former residence of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Botanica Suite has a private garden in the Italian Gardens, and the Chapel Room keeps its terrace over the same gardens.

Thirty-nine rooms against a buyout of 100 guests is a close fit, and it is the reason the buyout and the guest list are really one decision here rather than two. At the full hundred we put the families and the wedding party in the house and the rest in Florence, sixteen minutes away, with the shuttles run by us.

The hotel is on the Via di Doccia at Fiesole, in the hills north-east of Florence.

Florence city centre is 16 minutes down the hill, and a complimentary hotel shuttle runs to it through the day.

Florence Peretola is 26 minutes by road. Bologna is an hour and 27 and Pisa an hour and 39, and both carry more long-haul traffic than Florence.

Siena is an hour and 20, Perugia two hours and nine, and Rome Fiumicino three hours and 40.

A small hotel, a buyout quoted against the dates, and a room block that steps with the guest count.

The buyout is the figure that governs.

The figure that governs a real wedding here is quoted against the dates. We obtain the buyout number against your dates at the first approach, before the hotel is on a shortlist, because it is the only figure that changes the answer.

Twenty-nine guests, or the buyout.

The room block doubles between 29 guests and 31. There is a real wedding on either side of that line and almost nothing in between, so we price both and let the number decide rather than drifting into the larger one.

The civil ceremony can happen at the hotel.

The terms allow a civil ceremony on the property, which almost no Tuscan hotel does. It removes the drive into town, the parking, the waiting cars and the hour of the day that convoy always costs.

The late evening belongs indoors.

Fiesole is a hill town with houses below the garden wall. We put the dancing in the monastery’s own rooms and keep the terrace for the part of the evening that wants the view, which is the earlier part anyway.

Magic Day plans weddings at Belmond Villa San Michele from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the buyout figure obtained against your dates before anything is held, the guest list drawn against the stepped room block, the civil ceremony arranged at the hotel rather than in town, the Italian Gardens and the Loggia set for a banquet of up to 100, the late evening planned indoors with the musicians briefed, the signature suites allocated to the families, the overflow rooms in Florence and the shuttles between them, and the reserved-area fee agreed in the contract from the start.

We have worked Florence for years. Tell us the dates you are considering and how many people are coming, and we will tell you what the days come to.