Villa di Maiano wedding

Villa di Maiano stands in the hamlet of Maiano, on the slope between Fiesole and Florence, in olive groves and old sandstone quarries.

The house goes back to the fifteenth century. A storm battered the first palagio in 1467 and its owner sold the estate to clear his debts, after which it passed through the Sforza, the Buonagrazia and the Pazzi before the Gucci Tolomei. In 1850 John Temple Leader, an English politician who had fallen for these hills, bought it with every piece of furniture inside. He made it his home for the rest of his life.

Temple Leader is the reason it looks the way it does. His architect, Felice Francolini, raised the ground floor, added the central tower with its loggia, and turned the inner courtyard into a ballroom. The Tapestry Room, the villa’s main hall, sits under a balustrade of Florentine sandstone. Queen Victoria came in 1893 and sketched the pond for her album.

Villa di Maiano belongs today to the descendants of Elisabetta Corsini, whose private sitting room is still upstairs.

James Ivory filmed scenes of A Room with a View in the Red Room.

The villa is hired for the day, and the wedding moves down the hill with the evening: ceremony under the trees, aperitivo in the parterre, dinner on the terrace facing Florence, and the dancing indoors once midnight comes.

The main lawn and terrace in front of the villa, looking straight across to the city. It seats 300 to 400 for dinner and is where we put every Villa di Maiano wedding dinner the weather allows. A dance floor goes down here for the outdoor hours, laid over the lawn to protect it.

The ceremony garden, seating 200 under the oaks. It comes with the Gold Option, which a June or September Saturday includes.

The boxwood parterre below the terrace, with its fountain and the Duomo beyond the wall, and the olive grove past it. This is the aperitivo, and the place for photographs before the light goes.

The Tapestry Room is the villa’s main hall, seating 110, and the rain plan for dinner. The Carriage Room beside it takes 50 to 60. Both carry the dancing from midnight until one.

Two connected rooms for 50 each, used for a smaller dinner, a lounge or the children’s table.

The lemon house, holding a ceremony of 170 in the rain and the party after one in the morning. The Limonaia degli Orci and its glasshouse sit alongside for a second bar or a late kitchen.

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

The villa hires the day for up to 150 guests, from just under €15,000 to just over €26,000 with VAT included, depending on the day of the week and the month. A Saturday includes the Oaks Garden, both lemon houses, the Italian garden and the olive grove.

Every room on the ground floor, the terrace garden, the car park inside the estate and the villa’s kitchen, from eleven in the morning to three the next morning. The party ends at one, and teardown has two hours after it.

Above 150 guests the villa prices the hire on the guest count.

The caterer, the tables and chairs, the lighting, the flowers, the music and the coaches. The villa has no in-house catering, and every supplier comes in with its approval.

Outdoor music stops at midnight.

That is the comune’s rule rather than the villa’s, and it is the only curfew at Villa di Maiano. Indoors the music can carry on until five.

So the night runs in three rooms. Dinner and the first dances on the terrace until twelve, then the Tapestry and Carriage rooms until one, then the Limonaia Isabella for as long as the hours have been bought.

We design the evening around that move indoors rather than against it. The band stops for twenty minutes at midnight, the guests walk in, and the second set opens on a room already lit.

Villa di Maiano has no bedrooms.

It is an event venue, and the wedding sleeps in Florence, 12 minutes down the hill, or in Fiesole above it. Belmond Villa San Michele is 15 minutes away for the couple and the families, and the city has rooms at every level for everybody else.

A day venue this close to the centre is easier than it sounds. One coach loop runs back to the city at the end of the night, and the welcome dinner and the farewell lunch happen in Florence itself.

The villa is on the Via del Salviatino at Maiano, in the comune of Fiesole, in the province of Florence.

Piazza della Signoria is 12 minutes by road, Fiesole 14 and Florence Santa Maria Novella station 14.

Florence Peretola airport is 26 minutes away. Bologna is an hour and 25 and Pisa an hour and 36, and both carry more long-haul flights than Florence does, so guests from outside Europe often land at one of those. Siena is an hour and 20, and Rome Fiumicino just over three hours.

We prefer Florence for guests connecting through a European hub, because 26 minutes from the plane to the villa is hard to beat anywhere in Tuscany.

The view sells the villa, but the hours and the options decide the budget.

Decide the Gold Option at signature.

The Gold Option is priced as one bundle only when the contract is signed, so we settle the ceremony and the rain plan before the date is held, because the Oaks Garden and the Limonaia Isabella both sit inside it.

Above 110, the rain plan is a structure.

The Tapestry Room seats 110, so a wedding of 150 has no indoor dinner without a covered terrace. We cost one from the first budget and release it if the forecast is kind.

Every supplier needs the villa’s approval.

Villa di Maiano approves every supplier, and a new one needs a site inspection and a security deposit. We bring caterers and production teams the villa already knows, which takes the inspection off the calendar.

Book the mosquito treatment.

A garden dinner in June beside the olive grove needs the villa’s mosquito treatment the day before. It is a small line, and we never leave it off.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa di Maiano from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 60 guests or for 400. The villa lets its halls, its gardens and its kitchen for the day, and it has no catering and no rooms. That leaves the caterer, the furniture, the dance floor, the lighting, the power, the hotels in Florence and the coaches back at two in the morning with the planner.

What we know from working the villa is the shape of its night: dinner on the terrace until twelve, the move indoors at midnight, the Limonaia after one, and every hour past it bought before the evening rather than during it. We also know the Gold Option is decided at signature, and that every supplier needs the villa’s approval first.

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