Borgo Finocchieto wedding

The hamlet sits at Bibbiano in the comune of Buonconvento, on a ridge in the Val d’Orcia with Montalcino to the west and Monte Amiata filling the horizon to the south.

It had been abandoned for decades. The restoration took seven years and put back five villas and a small castle, with 22 bedrooms between them, and the estate now takes one party at a time and nobody else. In Italian a borgo is a hamlet, and that is the accurate description: this is a village reserved entirely for whoever has booked it.

The estate is one property rather than a hotel, so the wedding has the run of all of it.

The high terrace looking south across the valley, where the marquee goes. Its set-up is inside the package rather than a separate hire.

Three days of sole use of the castle are part of the package, alongside three nights of the borgo. It carries the smaller moments of the weekend.

The arched courtyard at the centre of the hamlet, lit in the evening, where dinner goes when the marquee is not the plan.

The orangery with its long windows, used for a seated dinner with the valley on three sides.

A Borgo Finocchieto wedding starts from €300,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €450,000 all-in for 70 to 100 guests.

One figure, just under €140,000, for three nights and a maximum of 100 guests.

What it carries is more than most Tuscan estates include in anything:

• Sole use of the borgo for three nights and of the castle for three days
• Accommodation for up to 44 guests
• Concierge and event coordination
• The set-up of the marquee on the Skyhill Terrace
• Housekeeping and evening turndown
• The in-house chef and his full team for all the dining and all the wine

The last line is the one that matters. At most estates of this kind the catering is a second contract and a second negotiation; here the kitchen is already inside the number.

A minimum spend applies on top of the package and is calculated against the final guest count.

Beyond that, the estate is relaxed about suppliers and says couples are welcome to bring in any additional vendors they love, which is a more open position than most of the Val d’Orcia takes.

Flowers, music, photography, the cake, transport for the guests who sleep off the estate, and the rooms they sleep in.

Borgo Finocchieto’s kitchen is led by Roberto Rossi, a Tuscan chef whose thirty-odd years of cooking earned a Michelin star at il Silene.

That star belongs to il Silene, not to this estate. There is no starred restaurant at Borgo Finocchieto and the distinction is worth making plainly, because a chef who holds a star elsewhere and a hotel with a star of its own are two different things and only one of them is true here.

What it does mean is that the cooking for a hundred people on a hillside is in the hands of someone who has worked at that level, and that his whole team comes with the package rather than being quoted separately. For a venue this remote, that is the difference between dinner being a logistics problem and dinner being the reason people remember the weekend.

Outdoors the music stops at midnight.

Indoors it runs until one in the morning.

This is the standard Tuscan shape and there is nothing unusual in it, which is itself worth saying after estates that run to three or four. What it means in practice is that the night has a move built into it at twelve, out of the marquee on the Skyhill Terrace and into the buildings of the hamlet.

An hour is not very long after that move. We always start dinner early here, put the dancing outdoors while it is still permitted, and treat the last hour inside as a close rather than a second act.

Twenty-two bedrooms across five villas, sleeping 44, all inside the package.

Because the hamlet was rebuilt as one house rather than as a hotel, the rooms come with sitting rooms, fireplaces, terraces and a library attached to them rather than a corridor. Families and groups take a villa between them and it behaves like a private house.

Forty-four against a hundred is the arithmetic that shapes the weekend. Buonconvento is fifteen minutes away, Montalcino half an hour and Siena fifty minutes, so there are rooms, though they are not next door and the shuttles matter.

The estate is at Bibbiano in the comune of Buonconvento, in the province of Siena, in the northern Val d’Orcia.

Siena is 50 minutes, Montalcino about half an hour and Grosseto an hour and 16.

Florence Peretola is an hour and 57 minutes by road. Perugia is an hour and 54, Pisa two hours and 45 and Rome Fiumicino three hours and 29.

Two hours from the airport is the price of the Val d’Orcia, and this estate is better placed than most of its neighbours. It is still two hours, and a guest list of a hundred arriving over two days needs that planned rather than assumed.

Half the guest list sleeps somewhere else, and that is the whole logistics problem.

Fix the off-estate rooms before the invitations.

Forty-four beds and a hundred guests means 56 people in Buonconvento, Montalcino or Siena. We block those rooms ourselves and allocate them, because guests left to their own devices book Siena, fifty minutes away, and then need driving home at one in the morning.

Use what the package already contains.

The chef, his team, all the dining, all the wine, the marquee set-up and the event coordination are inside the figure. Couples routinely hire a caterer, a coordinator and a marquee company on top of a package that already has all three, and we would rather spend that money on flowers and music.

Start dinner early.

Outdoor music stops at midnight and indoor music an hour later, so the usable evening is shorter than the ceiling suggests. We bring the ceremony and the dinner forward, put the band outside while it is allowed, and keep the after-midnight hour for a smaller room and a different mood.

Hold the June or September window early.

The estate opens limited windows, and for 2027 it has named the second half of June and most of September. Those are not many Saturdays, and a borgo that takes one party at a time has nothing to fall back on if they go.

Magic Day plans weddings at Borgo Finocchieto from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the three nights and the whole hamlet, the 56 rooms off the estate blocked and allocated before anyone is invited, the chef’s team briefed as part of the package rather than hired twice, the ceremony timed so the dancing happens before midnight, the legal half arranged at Buonconvento, the shuttles running late enough to get everyone home, and the June or September window held as early as the estate will take it.

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