Castello Il Palagio wedding

Il Palagio is a castle on the Via Campoli at Mercatale in Val di Pesa, in the Chianti hills south of Florence.

The building is arranged around an arcaded courtyard, with a walled garden beside it, a small tower, a flagstone driveway and a consecrated chapel inside the walls. It is hired for events rather than run as a hotel, and the estate prices it by the hour and the head rather than by the night.

Florence is 33 minutes north.

The castle is hired as a whole and the wedding moves between three spaces.

The arcaded heart of the castle, lit with torches on the arcades and candles in the windows for €200, and the setting for dinner.

The walled garden beside the castle, with torches on the walls and on the small tower, used for the ceremony or the aperitivo.

Consecrated, inside the walls, and usable for a religious ceremony as well as a symbolic one.

Flagstones lit for an arrival, and an electrified chandelier hung in a tree for €100, which is the estate’s own touch and costs less than any other lighting line in Tuscany.

A Castello Il Palagio wedding starts from just under €100,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €130,000 all-in for 80 to 150 guests.

The estate publishes two sets of bands by guest count. One runs at just under €2,000 up to 100 guests and just under €3,000 above it to a maximum of 150. The other runs at €3,000 and €4,000 for the same two bands.

We fix which set applies to the date in writing before anything is agreed. Either way the hire is between just under €2,000 and €4,000 for a wedding of up to 150, which is a very small venue line by Chianti standards.

A full day, nine in the morning to one the following morning, is €1,000 more. Beyond that the hours are priced individually: €300 from one to two, €500 from two to three, and €300 an hour for any further overrun.

For the couple and up to twenty guests the castle is hired by the hour at €500, with a maximum of thirty people.

Lighting the courtyard is €200 and the garden €200, both with VAT. A lit tree is €100 and valet parking €100. Half the hire is payable on signature.

Everything else. There is no kitchen operation and no accommodation, so the catering, the furniture, the flowers, the music and the rooms for the guests are all arranged by us.

The late hours here are the cheapest in our Tuscan portfolio, and they are published rather than negotiated.

A full-day hire runs to one in the morning. Two in the morning costs €300 more. Three in the morning costs a further €500. So the difference between a wedding that ends at one and one that ends at three is €800, at a venue where the whole hire is under €4,000.

Against the Chianti estates that charge well over a thousand euros for a single extra hour, or the comuni that forbid it at any price, that is a real difference. We buy those hours at contract stage, because the band, the bar staff and the coaches all have to be booked for the longer night regardless, and finding the hours available but the musicians gone is the worst of both outcomes.

Most Tuscan venues offer a symbolic ceremony and send the legal and religious business elsewhere. Il Palagio has a consecrated chapel inside the castle and states that it can be used for religious ceremonies as well as symbolic ones.

For a Catholic couple that is the whole argument for this venue.

The rite happens in the castle, the aperitivo happens in the garden thirty metres away, and nobody is driving between a parish church and a reception in the middle of the afternoon. We always start the paperwork early where a religious ceremony is involved, because that is the part with a long lead.

The paperwork is real but routine: a Nihil Obstat from your own diocese, signed by your bishop, so that an Italian parish can marry you. We arrange that, and the civil registration separately, well before the date.

Il Palagio is a venue you hire for a day rather than a place you stay.

At a remote estate that would be a serious problem, because 150 guests would be scattered across farmhouses and the transfer home at two in the morning would be the hardest part of the plan. Here the castle is 33 minutes from the middle of Florence on a main road.

So the accommodation becomes a city hotel question rather than a Chianti logistics question, and the late hours the estate sells so cheaply are actually usable, because a coach back into Florence at three in the morning is a straightforward thing to book.

The day-hire model also shapes the weekend. The welcome dinner and the farewell brunch happen in Florence rather than on the estate, because nobody wakes up at the castle. A wedding here is one very good day at its centre, and we build the evenings either side of it in the city.

The castle is on the Via Campoli at Mercatale in Val di Pesa, in the comune of San Casciano, in the province of Florence.

Florence city centre is 33 minutes and the airport 38.

Florence Peretola is 38 minutes by road. Bologna is an hour and 25 and Pisa an hour and 27, and both carry more long-haul traffic than Florence.

Siena is 59 minutes and Rome Fiumicino three hours and 41.

Half an hour from Florence is what makes the day-hire model so easy, and it is the reason this castle suits a guest list that is already going to be in the city.

A cheap hire, late hours priced by the hour, and a chapel that can marry you.

The estate publishes two different sets of hire tiers.

The estate publishes hire tiers at just under €2,000 and €3,000 in one place and €3,000 and €4,000 in another. We fix which applies in writing at the start, because the answer doubles or halves the venue line.

The hours to three are the cheapest in Chianti.

Two in the morning is €300 and three is a further €500. Those are the cheapest late hours in Chianti, and the suppliers have to be contracted for them in advance whether or not the castle is.

The chapel removes the parish-church trip.

A consecrated chapel inside the walls removes the parish-church trip entirely. We start the Nihil Obstat paperwork with your diocese as soon as the date is held, because that is the part with a long lead time.

Nobody sleeps here.

Nobody sleeps here, and the city is 33 minutes away on a good road. One coach loop at the end of the night is simpler and cheaper than scattering 150 guests across Chianti farmhouses.

Magic Day plans weddings at Castello Il Palagio from the first conversation to the final farewell. That means the two sets of hire bands clarified in writing, the full-day option and the hours to three bought at contract stage, the Nihil Obstat started early if the ceremony is religious, a caterer appointed and briefed on a castle with no kitchen, the courtyard and garden lighting specified against the estate’s own €200 lines, hotel blocks taken in Florence, a single coach route run at the end of the night, and the wet-weather plan confirmed before any date is held.

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 day comes to.