Castello di Spaltenna wedding

The castle stands on a hill above Gaiole in Chianti, in the middle of the Chianti Classico zone, wrapped around the Romanesque bell tower of the Pieve di Spaltenna.

It began as a monastery and was fortified, and the thousand years since have left a courtyard, a cloister, vaulted halls and thick stone walls that keep the heat out in August. It runs now as a five-star resort with 39 rooms, an indoor pool heated to 29 degrees, an infinity pool outside, a spa in the old pieve buildings, a tennis court and a pottery shop.

It holds no Michelin Key, which is worth saying because the brand is well enough known that couples assume otherwise.

The property is taken whole, so the question is which of its rooms the evening passes through.

The enclosed courtyard at the centre of the castle, where dinner is laid under the walls and the light is kept low. This is the setting most couples come for.

The largest indoor room, seating 56 on a U-shaped table or 48 on rounds, with a hard ceiling of 60. The wet-weather plan starts here.

Twenty-two across two rectangular tables of eight, used for the rehearsal dinner or for a smaller gathering within the weekend.

The terrace takes a hundred across ten round tables. The Bar Taverna underneath it is where the party goes at midnight and where it is allowed to stay until four.

A Castello di Spaltenna wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 80 to 100 guests.

Just under €20,000 per day, with the rooms included on a bed-and-breakfast basis and a maximum occupancy of 80 people. Two nights is the minimum, so the hire sits around €39,000.

Sole use is not optional here. The conditions require the whole property for any event or wedding reception, which is the reason the figure includes the beds rather than sitting on top of them.

From €150 a head, for five courses including the wedding cake, chosen from the hotel’s proposals.

Wine is not included. It is either charged on consumption from the list or taken from the castle’s own production, and the hotel offers better terms on its own label.

Priced by how many canapés are served: €20 a head for eight, €30 for twelve and €40 for all twenty. A sparkling beverage package is €12 a head, or €25 with the castle’s Chianti Classico Riserva and a Sangiovese Bianco alongside it.

Flowers, music, photography and the SIAE licence. Any chairs, linen, china or glass beyond what the hotel proposes carries an extra charge.

The final guest number is confirmed seven days out and charged whether or not everybody comes.

This is the latest finish we know of anywhere in the Chianti, and it comes in two halves that have to be read together.

Outdoors, a municipal ordinance limits music after midnight. That is the comune’s rule rather than the hotel’s and there is no negotiating it.

Indoors, with sole use of the property, the conditions allow a party with music until four in the morning in the Bar Taverna. So the shape of a Spaltenna evening is fixed: dinner and dancing in the courtyard until twelve, then everybody goes downstairs and the night runs another four hours.

We would rather plan to that shape than fight it. A midnight move is a good piece of theatre if it is designed, and a disaster if it arrives as a surprise at five to twelve. The SIAE licence is the couple’s responsibility and its receipt has to be deposited at reception before the party begins.

Thirty-nine rooms, sleeping up to 80, and all of them inside the sole-use rate.

The mix runs from five Classic rooms at fifteen square metres through eleven Superior and twelve Deluxe to four Junior Suites, three larger suites of forty metres, two with private terraces, one Jacuzzi Garden Suite of fifty metres and a family suite.

Eighty beds against a hundred seats leaves about twenty guests in Gaiole or the villages nearby, which at ten minutes away is a short shuttle rather than a problem.

The trade-off to weigh is the season. The property closes on 31 October and does not reopen until 10 April, so a couple who want an autumn wedding in the Chianti cannot have one here, and the six and a half months that are open are the same months every other Chianti estate is selling.

The property is open from 10 April to 31 October and closed the rest of the year.

The castle is at Pieve di Spaltenna, just above Gaiole in Chianti, in the province of Siena.

Siena is 35 minutes and Florence city centre an hour and two, which puts this within easy reach of both cities in a way that very few Chianti estates manage.

Florence Peretola is an hour and thirteen minutes by road. Pisa is two hours and nine, Bologna two hours and Perugia an hour and 51.

Gaiole itself is a few minutes down the hill with shops and restaurants, so guests staying off the property are not stranded.

The midnight move is the whole design problem, and it is solvable.

Build the evening around the move downstairs.

Outdoor music stops at twelve by order of the comune and the Bar Taverna runs to four. That means the night has an interval whether anyone plans it or not, and we design it as a moment: the last song in the courtyard, the walk down, and a different room with a different mood waiting. Handled well it is the hour of the night people describe afterwards.

Count the beds before the seats.

The terrace holds a hundred and the sole-use rate is written for an occupancy of 80. The constraint here is where people sleep, not where they sit, and a list of 120 means forty guests in Gaiole and a shuttle running twice. We fix that before the invitations rather than after.

Take the castle’s own wine.

Wine is charged separately on this estate and the hotel offers better terms on its own Chianti Classico. On a two-night celebration with an aperitif, a dinner and four hours in the Taverna, that is a meaningful line, and the wine is grown on the hill the guests are standing on.

Book inside the open season and early in it.

The property closes on 31 October and does not reopen until 10 April, so the calendar is six and a half months long rather than twelve. Within it, May and September are the weeks everybody wants, and the castle is small enough that they go two years out.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello di Spaltenna from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the two nights and the whole property, the guest list drawn against 80 beds rather than a hundred chairs, the ceremony arranged at the pieve beside the hotel and the legal half at the comune in Gaiole, the midnight move downstairs designed as a moment rather than a scramble, the castle’s own wine negotiated, the SIAE licence filed before the party, and shuttles for the guests sleeping in the village.

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 two days come to.