Villa Aurelia wedding

Villa Aurelia stands at the highest point inside the walls of Rome, on the Gianicolo above Trastevere, beside Porta San Pancrazio.

It was built around 1650 for Cardinal Girolamo Farnese. After his death in 1668 Count Alessandro Savorelli bought it, and most of the decoration inside dates from his time. In 1849 Giuseppe Garibaldi made it his headquarters for the defence of the Roman Republic, and the French artillery he was holding off took most of the original garden with it.

Count Savorelli repaired the house before he died. In 1885 it was bought by Clara Jessup Heyland, an American heiress from Philadelphia, who laid out the garden of holm oaks and magnolias that is there today. She left the villa to the American Academy in Rome in 1909.

The Academy still owns it.

A three-year restoration ended in June 2002, with the façade redone in pozzolana lime and ochre washes mixed on site, as in the seventeenth century, the ground-floor terracotta remade from local clay and the Sala Aurelia added in a wing of the house. Janus, the company that lets the villa for events, has looked after it since.

The villa takes one event a day, and the couple hires only the spaces the wedding needs. The day we design moves from the gardens to the house with the music: ceremony and aperitivo outside, dinner in the Secret Garden, and the dancing in the Sala Aurelia once the garden falls quiet.

Thirty-six metres by seventeen of lawn behind hedges and old trees, with the Millicent Fountain set in a tufa wall and Rome opening out beyond it. It seats 450 at round tables of ten.

This is where we put every Villa Aurelia wedding dinner the weather allows.

The chequerboard of potted lemon trees in front of the façade, 1,209 square metres of gravel and lawn. The aperitivo, and the photograph every guest takes.

Nearly two thousand square metres of box-edged beds around the Water-Lily Fountain, with a bay laurel gallery along the main garden and the Campanile, a romantic folly built from the stones of a medieval building. The ceremony goes here or in the Secret Garden.

The Sala Aurelia is a modern hall in an old wing, twenty metres long, with a coffered ceiling and a floor laid in a three-dimensional Palladian pattern. It seats 180 and opens onto the terraces facing the city. It is the rain plan for dinner and the room for the party after half past ten.

The Atrium, under a vaulted ceiling seven metres high, the Salone with its coffered ceiling and fireplace for 80, and the Loggia for 40. They carry the aperitivo on an uncertain evening, and the Loggia doubles as the room where the band and crew eat.

The Music Room for 80, gilded and painted with garlands and instruments, the Salone degli Affreschi for 70 and the Galleria for 40. For a dinner of 70 to 80, the Music Room is one of the loveliest rooms in Rome. From Friday to Sunday the top floor comes with the complete-villa hire.

A Villa Aurelia wedding starts from €150,000, and for optimal results we recommend budgeting €250,000 all-in for 120 to 180 guests.

Villa Aurelia is let by the day in packages of gardens and rooms, from just under €20,000 to just over €30,000 for the complete villa, VAT included, depending on the day and the month.

The spaces chosen, from six in the evening to one in the morning for an evening event, with the set-up during the day. A second set-up day can be added before a larger build.

The villa’s compulsory services, from cleaning and security to the garden lighting, are charged on top. The caterer comes from the villa’s own list and brings the tables, linen and chairs. Flowers, music, lighting, photography and transport are ours to budget.

Outdoor music stops at half past ten.

Villa Aurelia is inside the city, and that is the rule it works to. Inside the Sala Aurelia the music carries on to one in the morning, the end of the event, and can be extended by the hour to two at the latest.

So we build the evening in two halves. Dinner in the Secret Garden with a quartet or a quiet band, speeches before the hour, then the guests walk up to the Sala Aurelia at half past ten, where the dance floor is already lit and the terraces hold the city for anyone who steps out.

Villa Aurelia has no rooms for guests.

Three bedrooms and the Trustee apartment are let for getting ready, from ten in the morning until midnight, and nobody stays the night. The couple dresses upstairs, and the photographer has the gardens before anyone arrives.

The wedding sleeps in Rome. Trastevere is five minutes down the hill, St Peter’s five and Piazza di Spagna ten, which puts every level of hotel in the city within a short transfer. Rome Cavalieri is 11 minutes away on Monte Mario for a couple who want a resort.

The villa is at Largo di Porta San Pancrazio, at the top of the Gianicolo, in the Trastevere district of Rome.

Piazza Venezia is eight minutes by road, Roma Termini 12, and the Vatican five.

Rome Fiumicino is 42 minutes away and carries direct flights from New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta as well as London and every European hub. Ciampino, 28 minutes away, takes short-haul European flights. Guests arriving by train come into Termini.

We send every guest list through Fiumicino. The extra quarter of an hour over Ciampino buys a direct flight from almost anywhere.

The gardens sell the villa, but the gate decides the production.

The tunnel sets the size of every truck.

The way in is a gate 3.12 metres wide and a tunnel 45 metres long and 2.80 wide. We size the marquee, the furniture and the catering vans to that tunnel before anything is ordered, and we stage the loading so the drive never blocks.

Count to 199.

At 200 guests the hire and the security both step up. A wedding of 205 is worth a conversation about the last six names.

Bring the power.

The Sala Aurelia has a single 14 kW supply and the folly 9 kW. A band, a lighting rig and a garden dinner need more than that, so a silent generator goes into the first plan.

The date follows a visit.

Villa Aurelia opens its calendar after a site visit or a video call. We hold the call, bring a caterer from its list and suppliers who already know the house, and the date follows.

Lunch for the bridal party.

Nothing can be eaten in the getting-ready rooms. The caterer serves a buffet lunch in the ground-floor Loggia, and we book it with the rooms.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Aurelia from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 60 guests on the piano nobile or 450 in the Secret Garden. The villa lets its gardens, its halls and its getting-ready rooms for the day. It has no catering of its own, no furniture and no guest rooms, so the caterer from its list, the tables and chairs, the lighting, the power, the hotels in Trastevere and the cars back at two in the morning sit with the planner.

What we know from working the villa is the shape of its evening: dinner in the Secret Garden, the move to the Sala Aurelia at half past ten, the hour to two bought before the night rather than during it. We also know the tunnel decides the trucks and the 200th guest decides the hire.

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