Villa Miani wedding

Villa Miani stands at the top of Monte Mario, the highest hill in Rome, on the Via Trionfale above the Balduina.

An 1835 plan records the villa as the property of Giacomo Benvenuti, and in 1874 it was renovated for the Società di Monte Mario, led by Francesco Crispignini, a former mayor of Rome. It is neoclassical, white and long, with arched windows along the ground floor and more than three thousand square metres of rooms in frescoes and marble behind them.

In 1939 it was bought by the Società Anonima Ville Panoramiche, and its director, Luigi Miani, gave the villa the name it carries today.

It is a house the Romans know from the cinema as much as from weddings. Lo scopone scientifico was filmed here in 1972, and Fantozzi came four years later. Today it is run by Relais Le Jardin, a Roman banqueting house, which cooks for every event in its own kitchen.

The villa hires by the floor, and the evening moves through the house: a ceremony in the gardens, the aperitivo on the lawn above the city, dinner on the patio or in the ballroom, and the party indoors once eleven comes.

The panoramic lawn beside the house, edged in Italian hedges and the villa’s palms, with Rome and the dome of St Peter’s below it. This is the aperitivo, at sunset, on every Villa Miani wedding we plan.

The Orangerie is a small glass house down a garden path, made for a ceremony. The Secret Garden beside it has a belvedere lawn and a fountain with bronze figures. Either one takes the ceremony.

The courtyard in front of the arches, laid in geometric stone, with the whole façade behind it. It seats 500 at an outdoor banquet, and it is where we put dinner on a summer night.

The ballroom, the largest room in the villa, behind tall arched windows. It seats 550, which makes it the rain plan for any wedding the patio holds, and the room for the dancing after eleven.

The Salone Veneziano for 160, mirrored and frescoed, off the winter garden, with the Sala Bellevue facing the view, the Sala degli Arazzi and the Sala degli Specchi beside it. For a wedding of 150 these carry the whole evening without the ballroom.

Four connected rooms for about 220, the Sala Guardaroma, the Ambasciatori, the Camino and the Regine, open onto a long terrace over the courtyard and the city. Above them a spiral stair climbs to the top floor, a marble room with a terrace of its own and the suite.

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

Villa Miani hires its floors for the evening, with the same day from eight in the morning for the set-up. The ground and first floors run from just over €25,000 to just over €28,000 with VAT, depending on whether the Salone delle Feste is part of the evening.

Food and drink come only from the villa’s own kitchen. The menu, a cocktail reception, three courses served and a dessert buffet, starts just under €200 a head with VAT, for a minimum of 80 guests, with silver service at one waiter for every fifteen.

The bar, the sommeliers, the wedding cake and the champagne are priced on top.

Attendants for the cloakroom and the car park are compulsory, and the villa lights each area by the evening. Sound and light come through the villa’s own technical supplier. Flowers, design, music, photography and transport are ours to budget.

Outdoor music stops at eleven.

From half past ten the volume comes down to the legal level. Indoors the party runs to two in the morning, and past two it is bought by the hour.

So we plan the night in two rooms. Dinner and the first dance on the patio, the band moving into the Salone delle Feste at a quarter to eleven, and the terrace upstairs open for anyone who wants the city lights with a drink.

Villa Miani has one suite.

It sits on the top floor with a window on the dome of St Peter’s, and it is where the couple gets ready. The villa serves breakfast in it for the couple who keep it for the night.

Everyone else sleeps in Rome. Rome Cavalieri is a minute away on the same hill, the Vatican and Trastevere are 11 minutes, and Piazza di Spagna 13. We put the guests near the centre and run one coach loop up Monte Mario and back.

The villa is at Via Trionfale 151, at the top of Monte Mario in the north-west of Rome, with the suppliers’ gate around the corner on Via Alberto Cadlolo.

Piazza Venezia is 13 minutes by road and Roma Termini 14.

Rome Fiumicino is 48 minutes away and carries direct flights from New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta as well as London and every European hub. Ciampino, 34 minutes away, takes short-haul European flights.

Villa Miani has a large private car park inside the grounds, which in Rome is rarer than a view. We still bring guests up by coach, because the Via Trionfale climbs in tight bends and nobody should drive it at two in the morning.

The view sells Villa Miani, but the villa’s rules decide the build.

Everything is approved in writing.

Every project goes to the villa’s management for written approval, every supplier brings its safety documents and a liability policy of a million euros, and a damage deposit is held before set-up begins. We submit the drawings and the paperwork a month out, not three days.

Nothing touches the walls.

The rooms are marble and fresco, so nothing is fixed to a wall and every leg on a marble floor gets felt pads. We design the décor to stand free from the first sketch.

Set-up has one day.

The house is ours from eight in the morning and the guests arrive from half past five. We stage the build so the ballroom is finished first, whatever the forecast says about the patio.

Book the suite with the date.

There is one suite. We hold it at signature for the couple, so the getting ready, the first look and the night after all happen in the same room.

Magic Day plans weddings at Villa Miani from the first conversation to the final farewell, for 80 guests in the Salone Veneziano or 550 in the ballroom. The villa hires its floors and cooks for the evening, and its banqueting team runs the food and the bar. Everything else, the ceremony, the design, the flowers, the music, the lighting plan for its technical supplier, the hotels and the coaches up Monte Mario, sits with the planner.

What we know from working the villa is how its evening turns: aperitivo on the lawn at sunset, dinner on the patio, the band inside before eleven and the hours past two bought in advance. We also know that every drawing needs the villa’s signature before a single chair arrives, and that one day of set-up means the rain plan is built first.

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