Castello di Torcrescenza wedding

Castello di Torcrescenza stands in its own park at Grottarossa, in the north of Rome, just off the Via Flaminia.

It began in the eleventh century as a tufa watchtower on the Flaminia, signalling to the other towers across the Roman countryside. Through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries buildings of different heights grew up around it, and by the sixteenth century the whole had become the castle seen today. A map of 1547 already calls it the Crescenzi family’s country villa.

Two square towers with swallowtail battlements frame the front. A masonry bridge crosses the old moat where the drawbridge was, into a first cloister with Roman fountains of the Tiber and the Aniene, then a fifteenth-century second cloister with a travertine well at its centre. Pupils of Giulio Romano and of Federico Zuccari worked on the decoration.

The castle is under the protection of the state’s fine-arts superintendence.

It has also been a set for half a century of Italian film, from Totò’s Il monaco di Monza in 1963 to Poveri ma ricchissimi in 2017, and in 2005 it held the wedding reception of Francesco Totti and Ilary Blasi.

The castle works as a sequence: ceremony in the garden, aperitivo by the fountains, dinner in the cloisters, dancing on a glazed terrace.

Six spaces, and every one of them has a roof.

A square Renaissance cloister, arcaded on three sides, roofed in iron and glass in the nineteenth century so that it reads as a winter garden. It seats 308 for dinner on tables of eleven, and it is where we put every Castello di Torcrescenza wedding dinner of more than 200.

The entrance court behind the drawbridge, under a glass skylight that can be darkened, with three historic fountains and a Roman marble sarcophagus. It seats 300, and for a smaller wedding it is the aperitivo while dinner waits next door.

A glass gazebo opening onto the citrus garden, seating 180 and holding the ceremony when the weather turns. In fine weather the ceremony goes in the garden in front of it.

A terrace on the bastions, 28 metres long and glazed on three sides over the golf course. It seats 240, and it is our choice for the dancing.

The smaller terrace takes 139, the frescoed fireplace room 80. Together they cover a welcome dinner, a children’s room or a quieter lounge.

A Castello di Torcrescenza wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 120 to 250 guests.

The castle is hired whole for the day, for just under €11,000 to just over €13,000 with VAT, depending on the day of the week. A day event runs from eight in the morning to seven, an evening from two in the afternoon to one in the morning, and further hours are added to the contract.

The caterer, chosen from the castle’s approved list, and the valet parking, two attendants for every hundred guests. Then the flowers, the lighting of the cloisters, the music, the photography, the hotels and the coaches.

Rome’s own costs follow the wedding too: guests pay city prices for their rooms, and we budget the coaches from three or four hotels rather than one.

Castello di Torcrescenza has one bedroom, so nobody but the couple sleeps at the castle.

The bedroom, a canopied room lined with bookshelves, is kept for the couple and comes with breakfast. Everyone else sleeps in Rome.

That is less of a constraint here than anywhere else in Lazio. The castle is 18 minutes from Piazza di Spagna, so the guests choose their own hotels in the centre and a coach loop brings them up the Flaminia and back after the party.

The castle is on Via del Casale della Crescenza, at Grottarossa in the fifteenth municipio of Rome, with its gate on Via dei Due Ponti 100, a few minutes from Ponte Milvio and Corso Francia.

Piazza Venezia, Piazza di Spagna and Roma Termini are each 18 minutes by road.

Rome Fiumicino is 33 minutes away and carries the direct flights from the US and the UK. Ciampino is 32 minutes away for European traffic. Termini, 18 minutes away, has the fast trains from Florence and Naples.

We prefer a hotel near Piazza del Popolo for the families. It sits at the city end of the Flaminia, and the coach to the castle never crosses the centre.

A castle inside Rome changes the arithmetic: no rooms to fill, every hotel in the city to choose from, and a rain plan that is already built.

The cloisters are the rain plan.

Both cloisters are roofed in glass, so a Castello di Torcrescenza wedding never needs a marquee. We plan the dinner there from the start and use the garden for the ceremony and the aperitivo only.

Buy the hours at signature.

The evening window closes at one, and the music has no limit after that except the hours bought. We add them to the contract when the date is held, so the band never stops for a conversation about overtime.

The caterer comes from the castle’s list.

Only accredited caterers work at the castle, and it keeps lists of the florists and the sound and lighting companies it knows. We work with those vendors regularly and know which of them do justice to a dinner of 300 under glass.

Valet parking is compulsory.

Two valets for every hundred guests are compulsory. With guests arriving by coach from the centre, we keep the cars to the families and the suppliers.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello di Torcrescenza from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 80 guests or for 300. The castle lets its cloisters, terraces and park for the day, with one bedroom and an accredited list of caterers. That leaves the caterer’s menu, the design of two glass-roofed courtyards, the music, the legal ceremony at the Campidoglio, the hotels across Rome and the coaches up the Flaminia with the planner.

What we know from working in Rome is how the day fits around the city: the civil ceremony booked months ahead at the Campidoglio, the guests spread across hotels within a short coach ride, the hours past one bought when the contract is signed, and the dinner set in the cloisters whatever the forecast says.

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