Castello Odescalchi di Bracciano wedding

Rising over the town of Bracciano, with the lake spread out below its walls, the castle the Orsini began in 1470 beside an older fortress of the Vico.

The workmen were probably the ones building the Sistine Chapel at the same moment. Gentil Virginio Orsini brought in Francesco di Giorgio Martini to strengthen it, and by the end of the century the Court of Honour stood finished with its double arcade. Charles VIII of France stopped here in 1494 on his way into Italy.

Then the castle softened. Paolo Giordano Orsini married Isabella de’ Medici in 1558, Bracciano became a duchy two years later, and the Zuccari brothers painted the state rooms while hanging gardens and loggias went up on the walls.

The Orsini line at Bracciano died out at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1696 Livio Odescalchi, nephew of Pope Innocent XI, bought the castle, and the Odescalchi still own it. Prince Baldassarre restored it around 1900, room by room and faithful to what was there, and Prince Livio IV opened it to the public in 1952.

About twenty rooms on the piano nobile carry their frescoes and furniture, including one of the largest secular frescoes of fifteenth-century Rome, in the Sala delle Armi. It is still a museum by day.

The castle is hired for the evening from half past five, up to four spaces chosen from those below. A Castello di Bracciano wedding moves upward through the building: ceremony on the walls, aperitivo in the hanging garden, dinner in the courtyard, the late hours underground.

The guest count decides which four.

The old granary is a light-filled room looking over the lake. Its garden on the roof is the castle’s ceremony terrace, open to the water, and it takes a religious or symbolic ceremony or the welcome drink.

The cathedral of Bracciano, medieval with Baroque decoration, is joined to the castle by a gallery. Guests walk to it through the old borgo. For a Catholic ceremony at a Castello di Bracciano wedding, this is the answer.

A hanging garden laid out in the second half of the sixteenth century, with clipped hedges and cedars of Lebanon level with the towers. It faces the lake and takes the aperitivo better than anywhere else in the castle.

The heart of the castle and the room for a large dinner, enclosed on all sides by stone and the double arcades of the loggia. This is where we seat a wedding of 150 or 200, and where the dancing goes once dinner is cleared.

A run of frescoed rooms with their original furniture, centred on the Hall of the Caesars and its marble busts. For a dinner under 100 it is the room we would choose, and it is the plan for weather at any number it can hold.

The Armerie are a sequence of rooms partly cut into the rock beneath the castle, used for a ceremony or for the late bar. The old kitchens and the Sala del Pozzo on the courtyard close the night.

A Castello di Bracciano wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 100 to 200 guests.

The hire runs from just over €16,000 to just under €26,000, VAT included, depending on the guest count, from 100 up to 300. Above 300 the castle prices the evening separately.

Up to four spaces from half past five until one in the morning, with set-up from half past seven. The private car park, two support rooms for the couple and the help of the castle’s own staff come with it. The castle’s attendants and the cleaning afterwards are added to it.

Everything else. The caterer, the tables and chairs, the lighting, the flowers, the music and the coaches from Rome are all brought in, and the Castello di Bracciano wedding cost is decided by how many of those the evening needs.

Torchlight along the walls is the castle’s own, from the entrance alone to every battlement and tower.

The castle sets no music curfew.

The hire ends at one in the morning, and every hour after it is bought. By half past six the next morning the castle is empty and back as it was found, because at ten it opens to visitors again.

So the decision is how late, and it is made at signature. We usually buy two hours, take the music down into the Armerie after one, and have the strike crew waiting at the gate when the last coach leaves.

Castello Odescalchi di Bracciano has no bedrooms for guests.

It is a museum and a venue, and the wedding sleeps elsewhere: in Rome, an hour away, or in the small lake towns. Trevignano Romano is 16 minutes from the castle and Anguillara Sabazia 21, both on the water. The couple dress in the Medici-Orsini apartment, which the castle gives them for the day.

We put the families on the lake and everyone else in Rome. Bracciano itself is small, so a large wedding needs its rooms booked before anyone else has the same idea.

The castle stands on Piazza Mazzini in Bracciano, on the south-western shore of Lake Bracciano, in the province of Rome.

Piazza Venezia is 59 minutes by road, Roma Termini 59 and Saint Peter’s 58. La Posta Vecchia on the coast is 39 minutes away and the port of Civitavecchia 49, for guests arriving by sea.

Rome Fiumicino is 46 minutes from the castle, with direct flights from the United States and from London, and it is the airport we route every guest list through. Ciampino, for European flights, is an hour and four minutes.

Bracciano station is four minutes from the castle gate, on the line that runs into Rome at Ostiense, for guests who come out by train in the afternoon.

The castle gives you the rooms and the night, and very little else.

Nothing comes with the hire but the building.

No caterer, no furniture, no lighting. That is why the venue figure is low and the wedding figure is not, and we build the budget from the caterer up rather than from the hire down.

Every supplier is approved by the castle.

Their names go to the castle in advance for technical approval, and any fire on the walls comes through the castle’s own suppliers. The castle keeps a list of partners who work there often, and we work with those vendors regularly.

The coaches are the logistics.

An hour each way from Rome, with no rooms on site, means two coach waves at the end of the night, one at one o’clock and one after the late hours. We stage them at the bus park on Via dei Pasqualetti, ten minutes’ walk below the castle.

Under 100, go upstairs.

The Court of Honour is built for a crowd. A smaller wedding dines in the Hall of the Caesars, which holds its warmth and its candlelight in a way an open court cannot.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello Odescalchi di Bracciano from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 60 guests in the Hall of the Caesars or for 300 in the Court of Honour. The castle lets up to four spaces for the evening, with its car park, two rooms for the couple and the help of its own staff. Everything that makes it a wedding arrives through the gate.

That leaves the caterer, the kitchen built in a medieval courtyard, the furniture, the lighting, the dance floor, the music and two coach waves to Rome with the planner. We know the castle’s rhythm: set-up from half past seven, the doors to guests at half past five, the late hours bought at signature, and the building empty by half past six. We also know which room suits a candlelit dinner at each guest count.

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